Kerik, Valhalla and Me

Never let it be said I can't take a joke.  In today's paper, Ellis Henican writes a satirical 24 hours in the life of Bernie Kerik behind bars in Westchester County jail.  On this fictional to-do list at 5:30PM it says, "Contact Russell Harding, Jr. about starting a Westchester County jail chapter of Giuliani Alumni Behind Bars."  Funny.  Timely, topical, relevant - not especially mean, I laughed.  I didn't quite get the 'Jr.' reference.  He must not read this blog and isn't aware I am Jewish.  Jews don't name children after the living, hence the sparseness of names like Shlomo Rabinowitz IV.

It surprised me however that Mr. Henican would mention me in connection with Bernie Kerik and Westchester County.  While it is true I live there now, I certainly had no connection to Westchester prior to my case and very few people are aware of the fact that I was in the jail where Bernie Kerik is being housed for about 5 weeks in the Summer of 2005.

In April of '05' I was at FMC Butner in North Carolina (next door to the prison where Bernie Madoff is held).  It had been agreed between all parties in my case that, as I very much did not want to return to NYC and the Metropolitan Correction Center (MCC) for my plea, I would do it by video conference from Butner.  Video conferencing (VC) was very common at FMC Butner since so many of its inmates were from far and wide as Butner was the BOP's 'premier' medical facility.  VC was used for pleas, sentencings and motions of all kinds.  They had a special room set up for this purpose.  Interestingly, I was told that my court had never used VC for any appearance by a defendant and mine would be the first.  My judge fancied himself a techie and liked the idea of his courtroom being the first. 

The plea went off without a hitch from a technical and legal standpoint.  It was agreed that my sentencing would also be done that way three months hence.  Well, Debbie Landis, my prosecutor, did what she always did, she lied.  After the plea she discovered that no press had covered it because I wasn't physically there.  She was not going to be deprived of her crowning moment after 3 1/2 years and millions of dollars spent by Justice.  She told my lawyers she was withdrawing her consent and was insisting I be brought back to appear in person. 

I told my lawyers I would not go back and be housed at the MCC.  Everyone understood that returning to the MCC was what had caused me to attempt suicide while I was at a prison in Minnesota.  So Debbie agreed to house me at a Westchester County medical facility while I was in NY for my sentencing.  Knowing Debbie to be the lying cur that she is, I expected her not to keep her word and instead send me to the MCC. 

Only my then lawyer, Henry Mazurek, knows what I am about to tell you now.  I have never spoken of this before.  The day before I was supposed to begin the trip back to NY, I tried for a third time to commit suicide.  I mailed Henry a letter from Butner saying goodbye.  The first time was carbon monoxide, the second time a ton of pills, this time I would try a plastic bag as I had no access to the other two methods.  I ended up passing out, but did not asphyxiate myself.  Three time loser, I guess.  The next day I called Henry and told him I mailed him a letter and asked that he not open it until he saw me again.

When I get off the con air plane in Westchester - what a shock - Debbie lied.  I was not going to a medical facility but to Valhalla County Jail.  When my lawyer complained later that she went back on her word, Debbie's response was, "I said I would try, I never promised to make it happen."  Henry, my lawyer, told me flatly she had lied to him.  But nothing was to be done, I was going to be at Valhalla for the next few weeks.

Valhalla would end up being the only non-BOP owned facility I would be housed at.  I was at eight prisons within two years.  In the end, it was an interesting experience because I was able to contrast county/state facilities with federal.  Valhalla at that time - and may still - had two jails, an old and a new one.  The old jail, where I was initially housed, was a horrible place.  It must have been 70 years old.  The cell was filthy, tiny and hot.  The old jail lacked any A/C.  It was now July and that particular summer NY was broiling.  The old jail also represented the only time that I felt in constant physical danger from other inmates.  In the MCC everyone is terrified of the physical and mental brutality of the guards, not the other inmates.  In prison you're always 2 steps away from a fight or physical harm from your fellow inmates.  But if you knew how to conduct yourself you can seriously minimize the danger.  Valhalla I realized, was different.  Whether because it was a county facility and the inmates were there for more common physical crimes like murder and assault than in federal prison, I don't know.  But these guys in the old jail were looking for a fight all the time.

I got lucky.  After two days - I think because of the heat - they closed down one wing of the old jail and moved a bunch of us to the new jail.  The new jail and the old jail are connected by a central building so it was not as though you had to be transported.  Compared to the old jail, the new jail was really nice.  Elis Henican in his piece today kept making reference to a prison like setting; mess hall, outdoor recreation, things like that.  Valhalla isn't that type of place. 

You never see the outside except for a caged recreation area attached to your unit.  The unit itself it two-tiered.  All your meals are eaten in your unit at collapsible tables in a small dining/rec nook.  The meals are brought up in large warmers on individual trays.  Valhalla is a very boring place to do time.  The unit Bernie Kerik is in most likely is the same one I was in, unless, God forbid, he's in the old jail.  It's also likely he's being segregated. Not because he's famous but due to his police and corrections background.  But if I had to guess I believe he's probably in that same unit I had been in.  It's just like every other unit at the new jail but they kept the federal prisoners there.  Since there weren't enough fed inmates to fill a whole unit, you were housed with state inmates awaiting trial. 

For me the one nice thing about Valhalla was smoking.  Smoking was prohibited, and if you were caught, punishable by some pretty severe sanctions.  But the open-air, caged rec area made a perfect spot to smoke and usually not get caught.  The other nice thing was how cheap cigarettes were compared to federal prison.  At Butner we had been paying $15 a cigarette.  Here they were $5.  How do you get contraband in prison?  Just like you think, the guards. 

Within a day of being in any new federal prison you quickly knew from other inmates which were the guards on the take and who brought in contraband.  I never got involved at that level, I was just a customer, but I knew all the inmates who were running the contraband operations.  I've said it before, there is no more corrupt institution than the Federal Bureau of Prisons.  No other correctional agency in the country - local, county or state - is completely immune from oversight the way the Federal Bureau of Prisons is.  No FBI, no Justice, no US Attorney ever examines complaints about federal prisons - that's why you never hear of any.  Local and state authorities have no jurisdiction.  And because of that, the staff acts with an arrogant immunity that you will see nowhere else.

Staff all over the BOP have PO Boxes and bank accounts in family members' names in order to receive money from inmates' families to pay for cigarettes and drugs.  It's as common as 4:00PM count time.

Valhalla had some weird policies compared to federal prison.  In the BOP you order commissary once a week.  In Valhalla you could order it 3 times a week.  You chose from an order slip and it was delivered to your unit.  There were six different soda choices but the jail prohibited ice machines.  There were four different types of instant coffee you could buy but the commissary did not sell mugs or cups, as opposed to every federal institution.  To drink coffee you had to beg the guards to give you their used Dunkin Donuts styrofoam cup that they brought to work with them and then reuse it until it wore out.  Why would anyone sell coffee and yet nothing to make it in? 

Besides the smoking, the big treat for me was a silly thing.  It's hard to anticipate what things from your former life you will miss in prison.  You always think you know, but it's never what you actually miss.  One of the big things I missed was a nice towel after a shower.  BOP towels are small and very thin.  They don't absorb water, they're always damp and unless you have a 30" waist, you can't wrap them around yourself.  But Westchester County was, like many counties, not willing to pay for things the federal government did.  The federal mentality  - and from a correctional standpoint, I can't really argue with it - is that if you create a closed system where no outside products whatsoever can be introduced then you can control the introduction of contraband and limit other safety issues.  You've heard in some state prisons you can receive care packages from your family.  In the federal system your family can only send you money in order to buy things from the BOP; no outside food, clothing or sundries.  The exception is books and they must be ordered from someplace like Amazon not sent in by individuals.

Valhalla was perfectly happy to let your friends and family send you radios, books, clothing and music.  There was a lot of basic clothing that they wouldn't provide or sell in order to encourage you to have your family pay for it.  I don't think you were allowed to receive food, however, like in state prison. 

Anyway, a friend at the time dropped off some books, a radio and a huge, fluffy, white towel.  That towel was awesome.  

The other big difference was visitation.  I had never had a visitor before I went to Valhalla.  Friends offered to visit me in Minnesota and North Carolina but I said no.  When I got to NY, a personal friend and a family friend wanted to visit and I acquiesced.  Visiting policies differ from prison to prison in the BOP, but only because some prisons don't have facilities large enough to house visitors at-will.  While there is no outside oversight of the large scale corruption within the BOP, federal courts take very seriously things like visitation, so the BOP generally doesn't screw around with that. 

Some prisons work on a points system.  You get so many points a month.  Weekday visits use up X points.  Weekend visits use up more since more people want to visit on weekends.  One prison I was at also awarded preferences to people depending upon where they were coming from.  Long distance visits were given priority over local.  The last federal prison I was in, FMC Devens, had a large visiting area and visitation was at-will.  Come as often as you liked.    

Valhalla had by far the worst visitation policies and facilities.  In the federal system, when you showed up to visit, the inmate was sent for.  Whenever you came that's when he was called.  If you came early in the morning you could spend the whole day with your loved one in the visiting room.  At Valhalla there were two visiting shifts, each lasting only an hour.  Your family or friends had to wait on a line outside, for hours sometimes, in order to get inside.  And even when you waited there was no assurance you would get inside.  As I said, that summer was very hot and my two visitors were drenched in sweat when I finally saw them for 30 minutes.

One of them, a fancy upper east side lady, decided she wanted to visit again but was not standing on that line in the sun.  I explained to her there was nothing to be done about it.  She told me she would call the warden.  I laughed.  Jails don't work like that.  No warden is going to care that she's been inconvenienced.  Well, I guess you just have to know that lady because she got the associate warden on the phone and he arranged it so that she would not have to wait on line anytime she visited.

Enough about me.  The real question here is what should Bernie Kerik do and try to avoid doing.  My guess is that there is almost no chance an appeals court is going to reverse the judge's order revoking his bond.  I also think there's a chance the prosecutors will try and move him to the MCC, to further punish him.  However much the Feds pretend that they have no knowledge of conditions at the MCC, they know perfectly well what a depraved hellhole it is.  My advice to him is that if you can be fine with limited visits then stay at Valhalla.  

I think Bernie Kerik probably brought this on himself.  It appears that he violated a cardinal rule of the accused.  It's OK to thumb your nose at your prosecutor.  There may also be some rare times when it's OK to behave defiantly towards your judge.  But you must never attempt to get at one by defying the other.  That appears to be the case here.  Kerik was trying to lash out at the prosecutors and unfortunately didn't mind violating a judge's order to do it.  That's not good.

I wish him the best in Valhalla and hope that the caffeine withdrawal that we all go through upon unexpectedly entering prison has subsided by now. He's getting a really raw deal all the way around.  It's particularly unfortunate in his case because he was probably the finest Department of Corrections commissioner NYC ever had.  He reformed Rikers and made it a much safer and more tolerable place for both inmates and staff.  I am glad he's fighting the charges and wish him the best.

Comments

[ClubPenguinCheats]

The real question here is what should Bernie Kerik do and try to avoid doing.

[loma linda]

Prisons and Jails are disgusting. They simply do not do it right, and they dont care.

Now, I read about a month ago that a trend is beginning to limit inmates in jails to nothing but post cards. No, letters in envelopes.

I mean, what the hell is going on here? What if a person needs to actually communicate with the world outside? Humans, are going to seed i am afraid, losing it. Putting people in prison who have never committed a single violent crime, for like 25 years or more!

Humans are not basically evil, evil is just basically human.