Bernie Madoff
will spend his first night in prison this evening at the Metropolitan
Correction Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. It will be the start of
many months spent at the MCC. I was going to write about my stay at
the MCC when it was time appropriate in my series, J'ACCUSE. But Mr.
Madoff's incarceration compels me to say a few words. If there is an
American version of ABU Ghraib, the MCC
is it. I was in 8 prisons in the first two years of my sentence
including the notorious Atlanta USP. Nothing, absolutely nothing in my
entire prison experience compared with the month I spent at the MCC.
Make no mistake, those people who think - maybe even Mr. Madoff thinks
- that what awaits him in prison when he is finally sentenced will be
worse than his time in holding at the MCC are kidding themselves. The
MCC
is a place filled with horrors. The most sadistic and brutal guards -
and I repeat I was at a United States Penitentiary - are working at the
MCC. It was the start of my prison experience and I had no way of
knowing that this was going to be the worst of it. I saw inmates
brutally beaten by guards for no reason. Health care routinely
denied. The living conditions were the worst I experienced. Mr.
Madoff will spend an indeterminate amount of time starting tonight in
the Special Housing Unit, the SHU
. That's what many lay people call 'the Hole'. It is as filthy and
squalid a place as you might dream in your worst nightmares. Bugs in
your bed, on the wall and in the food. The food, at least in 2003, was
totally inedible. I don't say that as someone who is finicky. I have
now had food from various prisons and nothing could compare with that.
The smell of the food - the rancid, putrid smell - caused me to be
unable to eat and I lost 25 lbs in a month and contracted a form of
dysentery. Conrad Veidt said in 'Casablanca' that "...human life is
cheap". That was never more true during my years in prison than at the
MCC
. The staff there is so poorly trained, so ignorant and so consumed
with hatred for the inmates, that your life - your very life - is
always in jeopardy. Far less from your fellow inmates than from the
staff. I have never seen brutality and sadism as I did from the guards
at the MCC. No inmate in my experience was as twisted, cruel and
indifferent to human suffering as was the staff at the MCC. Nothing I
write here, I'm simply not gifted enough, can covey the level of human
depravity as existed in the staff of the MCC.
As some point early in my case - when the idea of prison still seemed unfathomable - I purchased book for white collar criminals facing prison written by a man who had done a year in a low security federal camp. Much of what he said would have no bearing on my later experience but he said one thing early on in the book that struck me and stayed with me throughout. He said that when you enter prison as a middle or upper class white male you are instinctively going to self identify with the guards not the inmates. You'll see yourself in their mold, not the scum - as you perceive them - that you are forced to cohabitate with. The author's biggest shock and mine too was discovering how wrong that perception was. The guards are not there to help you and they sure as hell don't identify themselves with you. Bernie Madoff will be looking to the COs (corrections officers) at the MCC tonight for assistance in making this transition. He will be sadly mistaken. He is the highest of high profile inmates and high profile inmates are always treated somewhat differently by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The BOP hates, really, really hates when it is revealed publicly how horrible conditions are at federal prisons. They want nothing bad to happen to Mr. Madoff lest it be revealed in court for all the world's press to hear. They count on the public's lingering misconceptions about federal prisons as country clubs or cushy compared to state prisons. With the exception of Texas and California , I never met an inmate who had done both state and federal time who wouldn't much rather be in a state prison. And it was never even close. Federal prison in general is a much harsher place to be incarcerated than are state prisons these days.
I know what Bernie Madoff did was terrible. I can't argue, although part of me wants to, with his getting life. But I cant wish the MCC on even the worst person. There are many experiences in life that you can possibly fathom without having lived them. Prison to a small extent can be imagined although not in the main. But time served at the MCC is unimaginable. Many of you will say: good, he's getting what he deserves. But I can't wish that place on any 70 year old man. Even Bernie Madoff.
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