Aww... Martha didn't get her choice of prisons...

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-09-29 02:50pm

OK, I'm watching the news and they just announced that Martha Stewart just got informed of the federal prison she's to report too, something nicknamed called "Camp Cupcake" in West Virginia. Unfortunately for the poor dear, she didn't get her first two choices of prisons, so she couldn't go to prison she wanted in Massachusetts or Florida.

I want to know what's up? Since when do they even ask convicted criminals what prison they want to go to or tell them that they probably should report to prison in about a week? I don't get this at all. If I commited crime and I got convicted, I'm certain that the authorities wouldn't ask me what slam I'd go to, I'd end up in with a delightful view of the Mon through the bars of Allegheny County Jail, not a choice of hotels that I'm not allowed to leave.

It turns my stomache.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-09-29 02:56pm

I want to know what's up? Since when do they even ask convicted criminals what prison they want to go to or tell them that they probably should report to prison in about a week?

About par for the course for white collar criminals actually. There's a reason these are half jokingly referred to as Club Fed.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-09-29 02:59pm

Stormbringer wrote:About par for the course for white collar criminals actually. There's a reason these are half jokingly referred to as Club Fed.

My problem is that not that it's common but that they do it at all. Why should white collar criminals get such indulgences when it comes to prison?

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-09-29 03:05pm

Gil Hamilton wrote:
Stormbringer wrote:About par for the course for white collar criminals actually. There's a reason these are half jokingly referred to as Club Fed.
My problem is that not that it's common but that they do it at all. Why should white collar criminals get such indulgences when it comes to prison?

Keep in mind these are the reasons it's done, not reason I think it should be:

1) White collar criminals aren't by definitition, none violent offenders. So there's no need to for the kind of secruity and harsh treatment of maximum and super-maximum security prisons.

2) They generally are out on bail because of the lengthy prosecution times. Hence the 'check in' times and such.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-09-29 03:30pm

Well, it's like this.

A guy rips of someones unlocked car and gets caught by the police. The car is returned without damage to the owner and the perp is taken into custody.

A guy of some company steals a dollar amount of money that closely resembles a phone number. The FBI eventually busts him after a lengthy investigation (which costs the state a pretty penny), but thanks to this guy, the companies tanked and several thousand people are financially ruined. The Feds arrest him.

Who commited a worse crime and who's going to get the harsher punishment?

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-09-29 07:35pm

Gil Hamilton wrote:Well, it's like this.

A guy rips of someones unlocked car and gets caught by the police. The car is returned without damage to the owner and the perp is taken into custody.

A guy of some company steals a dollar amount of money that closely resembles a phone number. The FBI eventually busts him after a lengthy investigation (which costs the state a pretty penny), but thanks to this guy, the companies tanked and several thousand people are financially ruined. The Feds arrest him.

Who commited a worse crime and who's going to get the harsher punishment?

But who's more likely to escape?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2004-09-29 07:52pm

fgalkin wrote: But who's more likely to escape?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Neither if they're both sent to non country club prisons. The issue isn't that the car jacker should be treated better, it's that the corporate criminal should be treated worse then they are now and they should be.

Bertie Wooster · Post by **Bertie Wooster** » 2004-09-29 07:57pm

Martha Stewart lives (but not for long) in the next town over from me in Westport CT, and she wanted to go to the prison in Danbury CT, which is 15 minutes away, so I was somewhat hoping she'd go to the Danbury, CT prison which can be seen from the highway so I could look out my window whilst driving and say, "oh there's Martha Stewart"

Oh well.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-09-29 08:24pm

Gil Hamilton wrote:Who commited a worse crime and who's going to get the harsher punishment?

The White Collar criminal in both cases actually, unless the buglar's got a serious history. He'd most likely be doing time in a jail not prison.

Post by **Broomstick** » 2004-09-30 06:39am

Just because Martha asked for a particular prison means nothing - there is no reason Joe Perp can't ask for one particular prison over another. You can always ask - just as you can ask a judge for mercy or leniency. In no way means you're going to get it, or that they courts are somehow giving you a "choice". Obviously, in this case the judge ignored Martha's request. A judge can do that.

As for the "report for check in" - there's a concept called "flight risk". OJ Simpson, for example, was not given a check-in date and time because he had already zipped halfway across a continent on the night of his wife's death and they weren't going to give him a second chance. Martha, on the other hand, asked to start serving her sentence now instead of waiting out an appeal. Hardly the action of a "flight risk"

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2004-09-30 09:20am

Charleston (WV) Gazette wrote:September 30, 2004
Martha Stewart's new abode

By Rick Steelhammer
Staff writer

ALDERSON — Starting Oct. 8, Martha Stewart will begin serving her five-month sentence for lying to federal investigators here, in the Alderson Federal Prison Camp.

The grassy, tree-shaded, campus-like prison complex, with a mixture of old brick cottages and new concrete dormitories, wasn’t Stewart’s first choice.

She asked federal Bureau of Prisons officials to allow her to do her time in Danbury, Conn., at the federal prison nearest her home and her mother. If no space was available there, the federal women’s prison in Coleman, Fla., was her second choice.

Wednesday’s announcement that the 75-year-old prison complex on a bluff overlooking the Greenbrier River would be Stewart’s address for the next five months seemed to catch town and prison officials by surprise.

“I wasn’t expecting it,” said Mayor Luther Lewallen. “I thought she would serve her sentence in Connecticut. I’m sorry she can’t be closer to her mother, but I wish her success in completing her term here and getting on with her life.”

“I was surprised,” said Hillary Benish, who, with her husband, John, operates the Alderson Hospitality House, a residence where families of inmates can stay while visiting loved ones serving time in the remote minimum-security prison. “So was the staff at the prison.”

But after the shock of Stewart’s impending arrival wore off, several Alderson residents began to see the lifestyle guru’s presence in the town as a good thing.

“It will put our little town on the map,” said Alan Truman, a water purification system salesman who lives across the railroad tracks from the prison.

“If nothing else, it will bring a lot of reporters and television crews here, where they will eat in our restaurants and buy things in our stores,” Truman said. “It will be good for business.”

Lewallen said Stewart’s term will give the town “our five minutes in the sun.”

Maybe with all the publicity, people will see something about our town that they like, and get them interested in visiting here or doing business here,” he said. “But I think after the initial spurt of excitement from her arrival here dies down, things will rapidly get back to normal.”

“If Martha Stewart opens her eyes to the kind of people she may not meet on the set of her television show and listens to their stories, she could become a voice for these otherwise voiceless women,” said Benish. “It could help improve conditions for everybody.”

“By the time they go through those gates and into the prison, many of those women are physically, emotionally and financially broken. And even though this is a minimum-security facility for non-violent offenders, the average stay here is 67 months, due to mandatory sentencing laws.

“Rehabilitation is no longer a part of the Bureau of Prisons’ mission statement. It’s a system in which no one benefits.”

The Alderson prison camp is not surrounded by barbed wire and does not subject inmates to an oppressive environment, according to Benish.

“It’s more a psychological prison,” she said. “You choose to stay here every day.”

Officials at the prison declined Wednesday to comment on Stewart’s arrival.

The prison camp’s 1,000 inmates are a familiar part of town life in Alderson.

“They help us cut grass, maintain the park, clean streets and paint yellow lines,” said Lewallen. “Their fire department backs up ours. The town and the prison have always had a good partnership.”

“People are still grateful for all the work they did helping the town recover from the ’96 flood,” said Betty Alderson, who runs a family-owned department store that’s been in business since 1887, and thinks Stewart got a raw deal.

“I feel sorry for her,” she said. “Others have done worse and been punished less.”

While Stewart’s presence in Alderson may give the town a bit of a boost, “it’s going to be very hard on the prison,” said Lewallen. Prison officials will have to balance the desire to make sure nothing untoward happens to their celebrity prisoner with the need to show other inmates that Stewart does not receive preferential treatment.

Stewart is not the first celebrity inmate to serve time at Alderson. World War II propagandists Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally spent time here, as did jazz singer Billie Holiday, Charles Manson disciples Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Susan Good and would-be presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore.

Stewart was convicted in March of lying to federal investigators about why she sold 3,928 shares of ImClune Systems Inc. stock in December of 2001, just before the value of the stock dropped dramatically.

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2004-09-30 09:23am

Charleston (WV) Gazette wrote:September 30, 2004
Homemaker will have little privacy at Alderson
By Robert J. Byers
Staff writer

If Martha Stewart is treated like every other inmate who arrives at the Alderson Federal Prison Camp, she will spend her first three weeks in a small house, sleeping in a room with several other new arrivals.

“It’s an orientation period,” explained Hillary Benish, who runs the Alderson Hospitality House with her husband, John.

Then Stewart will move to “the range,” one of the large dormitory-style facilities that house the majority of Alderson’s 1,042 female inmates.

The floor of each “range” building is covered with a maze of cubicles, divided by 5-foot-high cinderblock walls, Benish said. Two women share each cubicle and everyone shares common bathroom facilities.

The cubicles have no doors and very little privacy, particularly for the inmate who gets the top bunk, which sits higher than the block walls.

“If you’re on the top bunk, you can see everyone else who has the top bunk,” said Benish, whose Hospitality House provides a place for families of inmates to stay while they visit their loved ones.

Stewart, 63, will also be assigned a job during her time at Alderson.

“Each woman is required to work at the prison. It’s a work camp,” Benish said. “Everyone is assigned a job — it could be in the cafeteria, or doing grounds maintenance, working in the library or cleaning.”

Because of its pastoral, campus-like setting and lack of fences, Alderson has gained a reputation as a place to comfortably serve out a sentence. But Benish said that philosophy goes only so far.

“It’s not the harshest environment on Earth — there’s lots of green space, lots of acreage unlike more modern prisons — but you’re still separated from your family,” she said. “You don’t have the freedom of choice, and therein is the harshness of it.”

Like many other casual observers who thought Stewart would serve her time closer to home at a prison in Danbury, Conn., Benish was surprised by the choice of Alderson.

Then again, it’s something that has been rumored since Stewart’s conviction in March for lying about a stock sale.

Inmates and families of inmates that Benish has talked to regarding a possible appearance by Stewart seemed disinterested, Benish said.

“They don’t really care,” she said. “They want to get home and get reunited with their families. They’re all praying for the same thing — as will Martha — and that is the day they can get on with their lives.”

Benish decries the mandatory minimum sentencing laws that have led to the imprisonment of countless women at Alderson.

“That’s why these prisons are overcrowded,” she said.

Alderson is over its capacity by more than 100 inmates.

“The majority of these are drug convictions, but they’re conspiracy convictions, which means they didn’t necessarily do anything, but they associated with people who did...

“The average sentence here is 67 months. I don’t see how anyone benefits. They’re sucking off the tax base. The families are broken up. I don’t see any rehabilitation in this.”

For Stewart, who is to serve five months, Benish thinks the biggest challenge will be adapting to a lifestyle and a crowd of peers worlds away from what she is used to.

“She’s going to meet a lot of people from very different socioeconomic backgrounds,” Benish said, adding that she hopes Stewart will take her time at Alderson to heart, and later serve as “a voice for a lot of voiceless people.”

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2004-09-30 10:02am

Maybe she can do something about the decor at Alderson.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-30 11:58am

Gil Hamilton wrote:Well, it's like this.

A guy rips of someones unlocked car and gets caught by the police. The car is returned without damage to the owner and the perp is taken into custody.

A guy of some company steals a dollar amount of money that closely resembles a phone number. The FBI eventually busts him after a lengthy investigation (which costs the state a pretty penny), but thanks to this guy, the companies tanked and several thousand people are financially ruined. The Feds arrest him.

Who commited a worse crime and who's going to get the harsher punishment?

the burglar is likely to get charged with a misdemeanor at worse, while the white collar criminal will get hit with a felony, if not multiple felonies. normally they won't give you any more than a couple of months for misdemeanors, while felonies can get you years.