Bernie Shops For Prisons

I tried to ignore this story yesterday, I really did. But find that I can’t do it.

According to the London Times, Bernie Madoff has hired a “top prison consultant” (who knew that such people existed) to “help him find the the best possible jail” in which to do his 150 years.

Aside from our irritation that Madoff has access to any funds at all with which he can hire such a person, it is even more vexing that Madoff and his lawyers believe that, once they determine “the best possible” prison (It’s prison, people, not jail), that they will be able to influence the choice of facilities.

Due to Madoff’s lengthy sentence, he is prohibited from being sent to any of the Club Fed-type places that house such other high profile law breakers as Martha Stewart and other first time, non-violent white collar inmates.

This little bit of news was, according to the Times, a bit of a shock to Mr. Madoff and his “consultant”—Herb Hoelter, of the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives, whose previous clients include the jailed Sotheby’s chairman Alfred Taubman and the financiers Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky. .

“He was incredibly disappointed. He knew he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison. I don’t think that was ever an issue,” Mr Hoelter told The Times. “But it’s patently unfair to cast him as a symbol of all evil.”

Federal convicts are assigned to minimum, low, medium, high-security prison, or even the sole Supermax facility, by the US Bureau of Prisons using a score-card known as Form BP-337 to calculate an inmate’s “Security Point Total”. A first-time non-violent white-collar criminal convicted in a US federal court would normally qualify for incarceration at a minimum-security “prison camp” with easygoing rules and no perimeter fence. But the length of Mr Madoff’s jail term means that he has no hope at all of going to one of them.

Bummer.

Or as some of his soon to be colleagues would say, if you don’t want to do the time, dearest Bernie, don’t do the crime.

According to AOL’s Daily Finance, Southeby’s Taubman….

…. spent his nine and a half months at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota, getting medical care on the government dime. Taubman’s book, Threshold Resistance, contains some prison advice Madoff may find useful, such as making friends, keeping a pleasant demeanor, and bringing reading material.

Madoff, however, may need some slightly different advice.

A sentence above 30 years usually places an inmate in a high-security category, meaning that Madoff would be assigned to a prison housing violent offenders including murderers and rapists. Ed Bales, of Federal Prison Consultants, which is not involved in the case, said that Madoff was likely to be held in isolation, known as “the hole”, at least at first.

Yeah, well, that’s what happens to most people who draw big, bad sentences. Consultant or no consultant, in the end his location will be up to the discretion of Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Look. I honestly don’t mean to sound vengeful. It is merely that I do not believe that the guy who robbed thousands of people of their life savings merits special treatment simply because he’s rich and….you know….white.

We put eighteen-year-olds with no priors in level four maximum security prisons if their crimes are deemed to be gang related. Bernie Madoff is no more vulnerable or valuable than they are.
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Photo by Bob Daemmrich/Polaris/eyevine