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Bernie Will Be Prison Royalty
Federal rules require that Madoff live out his 150-year sentence in a maximum-security prison—but he'll have a lot working in his favor: he's elderly, he's a criminal father figure, and he stole from the rich. Here’s what he can expect when they throw away the key.
Bernie Madoff is going to jail for the rest of his life. But when he was first turned in by his sons in December, a number of my acquaintances who work in the criminal justice arena noted that, despite the enormity of the charges, he was not paraded in front of TV cameras with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Circumventing the humiliation of the perp walk was probably negotiated with the Feds well in advance of his surrender, and his ability to do this highlights the easier ride that virtually all white-collar criminals enjoy in the justice system. But Madoff will have additional advantages working for him even if he doesn't go to "Club Fed." American prisons are home to a counterintuitive subculture, one where certain traits that would normally be a strike against you can actually work in your favor.
At the top of prison hierarchy are professional bank robbers. Next on the food chain are the Madoffs.
A few weeks before being released from federal prison on my last number, I was standing around bullshitting with three or four other prisoners and a staffer, the unit manager, Ernie Barker. Barker, who was a Bureau of Prisons company man down to the tip of his cheap shoes, said, “If I was old, and didn’t have no family to go home to, I’d much rather stay here in prison than go to a nursing home.”
We all paused for a moment and then nodded in unison—Barker was right. To a large degree, the elderly are venerated in prison. The stories you hear about elder abuse in nursing homes are simply not part of American prison culture. The 70-year-old Madoff will have age on his side.
The nature of Madoff’s alleged crimes will help him as well. Even in a place as mean as Rikers Island, young toughs—black, white, and Hispanic—would treat Bernie like visiting royalty. The more opprobrium heaped on him on the outside, the more venerated he’ll be on the inside. Why? Because he screwed the type of people whom his future prisonmates feel they’ve been screwed by all their lives. He’ll be regarded as a felonious Robin Hood.
As in all cultures, hierarchy also plays a major role in how a prisoner is treated by his fellow convicts. And keep in mind that prisoners run prisons -- the guards are just there to assure no one leaves before their sentence is up. The cultural norms are set by the inhabitants of the institutions, and they vary little from locale to locale. (A side note on culture: Prisoners consider the term “inmate” a connotation of subservient compliance. On my first number, I found out the hard way not to use it. The real hardcore prisoners only answer to “convict.”)
At the top of this hierarchy are the professional bank robbers, and I’m not talking about some desperate dope fiend who shoves a note in a teller’s face and receives a packet that explodes red dye all over his simple ass before he’s two blocks away. I’m talking about second- (and in some cases, third-) generation bank robbers who knock off banks with calm, calculated precision.
Next on the food chain are the Madoffs and, yes, the counterfeiters like I used to be. Real convicts feel there is only one reason to end up in prison: the pursuit of money. Everything else is bullshit or a character weakness. The lick Madoff laid down is going to get him major props no matter what joint he goes to. Hell, it might even grant him the supreme honorific of “O.G.” That’s “original gangster,” dog.
Drug dealers are next in the pecking order, followed by sex offenders, who, in many states, are housed separately in prisons only with like kind. Following one’s pecker into prison is frowned upon by real convicts.
But perhaps most importantly for Madoff, in an environment such as prison, a dignified bearing is cherished by young men who’ve never encountered anyone who possessed one. All Madoff has to do is project the caring image of a father figure, like Charlie Manson did with his followers. We have young people in America who are so starved for any kind of attention that they’ll literally lay down their lives for a manipulator who offers them a few kind words.
And what about the facility itself? The federal system has a supermax prison in Colorado whose denizens spend up to 23 hours a day in their cells. Still, federal prisons are almost always preferable to the madhouses that overcrowded state-run facilities have become.
See, the trick to doing time is to come out with as much of your health and sanity intact as possible, and federal prisons are exceptionally clean, professionally run facilities that provide adequate healthcare and decent food. Occasionally steak is served, though your molars had better be in good shape, since you’ll be chewing on prison steak for a long, long time.
If a federal prisoner has a serious health issue, they can be shipped off to the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota, where the Mayo Clinic has beds set aside for them. In fact, here’s a little secret: If you have a serious health issue and no insurance, throw a brick through a post office window – you could get three years in a federal joint and come out with a new kidney or a heart transplant.
To think that any prison, no matter how well run, is akin to a vacation spot is mistaken. The mere fact of having every door locked, with someone telling you when to come, go, eat and shit, is traumatizing. But even stripped of Rolex watches and $6,000 Brioni suits, a prisoner like Madoff can thrive as much as circumstances will allow. Money, in the end, always wins, no matter how supposedly level the playing field of an institution like prison.
Mansfield Frazier is a native Clevelander and former newspaper editor. A published author, he served as a contributing editor of the Cleveland Tab Newsmagazine, the editor of the Cleveland Call & Post, and managing editor of CityNews, and urban-focused weekly, before changing over to Internet journalism. His regular column can currently be seen on CoolCleveland.com. An avid gardener, he resides in the Hough neighborhood of Cleveland with his wife Brenda and their two dogs, Gypsy and Ginger.
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This sounds nice, but Bernie's going to hate the slammer. The luck of the draw in a prison husband will count for a lot.
In ranked order I would still put money on Bernie:
1) Dragging this out, dealing a little info at a time, until he can die before its all completed and he does any "hard" time.
2) Fleeing the coutry and living off the consider stash he must still have hidden in some off-shore account.
3) Negotiating some "white collar" "minimum security" prison in exchange for his cooperation.
4) Facilitating his own demise if all of the above don't work out
5) Hard time is the bottom of this list...
Mr. Frazier makes prison sound fun!
You are right due to money Madoff will have an easier ride than other prisoners. However, for a man who was used to having the best of everything, his time in any prison will be "hard time."
I always love reading your stuff. Well done, Mr. Frazier!
No difference between this guy and a common thug. He should get no special treatment. Madoff and anyone else involved should be treated worse than the criminals on Rikers Island. No special treatment. In fact his punishment should start by allowing his victims 10 minutes alone with him.
Our justice system is more corrupt than Madoff if he gets anything less. In fact, anything less and we should expect a flood of this criminal activity. Why not, the upside is worth it.
Your entire justice system is fundamentally racially and socio-economically biased. Besides the obvious fact that rich people can afford better lawyers who "work the system," the laws themselves are stacked in favor of white collar crime, regardless of the scope of the crime. Objectively it is absurd to argue that Bernie's crimes are not more heinous, both in terms of the negative impact on people and the intent to harm, than many other crimes committed by the less fortunate, but the system is stacked to classify it as non-violent and therefore treat it more lightly. Last week in New Jersey a homeless man escaped the cold by trespassing in an abandoned building and starting a small fire to keep warm. Unfortunately the fire got out of control and the local fire department was called to the scene to put it out. In the course of doing so one of the firemen responsible for guiding the fire truck into reverse with hand gestures got distracted and looked away. The truck continued to back up and ran him over, killing him. That homeless man, who had no intent to harm anyone and was just trying to keep warm, who was at least two degrees of separation from direct responsibility for the tragic accident that actually caused the poor firefighter's death, is now being held without bail and is facing felony murder charges. Murder. And he won't have any fancy firm of lawyers (paid for in Madoff's case using some of the very money that he obtained through his criminal actions) to defend him. And how is it that this homeless man can be held responsible for the accidental death of a fireman looking the wrong way but Bernie can't be held responsible for the person who has already killed himself as a result of Bernie's actions or the many other lives he has literally destroyed?
This is but one example. There are entire categories. Why can someone commit a DUI that results in a death (an action one could argue required intent since the moment they allowed themselves to be in a position to drive when they decided to get drunk they were effective deciding to roll the dice with whomever was in their way no differently than someone walking around with a partially loaded gun and pointing it randomly at people and pulling the trigger) and often end up with little or no jail time, but someone else, usually poor or Black, can buy some drugs for their own use, not being violent or directly hurting anyone, and end up with hard time and in some cases due to 3-strikes laws life in prison? Why is death row vastly disproportionately black? Is it because more blacks commit worse crimes or because we as a society have defined their crimes as worse? Our entire system is structured to selectively benefit the crimes of the well off and the rich. A stupid person (likely poor or a minority) with a drug habit can walk into a bank and pass a note saying they have a gun and to give them money, walk out with maybe $10,000 and do seriously hard time even if it turned out they didn't have a gun. But a rich person can commit fraud involving the theft of billions and the system says that crime is not as severe...
For that matter, how is it a minor offense that some argue shouldn't even have been a crime for a sitting President (alleged) and Vice President (now confirmed) to knowingly expose an active under cover agent of the CIA, thus potentially putting her life directly at stake and indirectly jeopardizing who knows how many other lives as a result of the dominos that fall with her blown cover, for nothing more than a political public relations purpose, but a harmless braggart half way around the world can make a passing claim that he "knows how to make a shoe bomb" (mind you, it was never claimed even by the U.S. that he threatened to actually do so or had any ill-intent against the U.S. or any other government) and that is enough to render him from the country he's in, ship him to a detention camp for 6 years, with occasional field trips to foreign countries that don't have prohibitions against torture, deny him basic U.S. or international rights, then finally release him when the realize he is harmless with no apology or regret? Where's the justice in that?
I'd say its time to take a good look at the system except the people running it are the same ones benefitting from it and they have yet to demonstrate the strength of character collectively to see the injustice, or to do anything about it...
civitas
Great post.
And the "rub" inherent in the whole thing--the seat of all the injustice you describe--is summed up in your final paragraph.
"Strength of character" relies on an individual's willingness to often put his self-serving needs (and that of his immediate family/constituency/PAC) aside when having to choose serving individual or collective good.
In our society, you're relegated to "zombie socialist" or, if your detractors are feeling kind, "silly tree-hugging hippie" status ,if you dare profess such a notion that it's in the best interest of each of us that ALL of us have a shot at a decent existence.
I will always hope that a larger proportion of us while exhibit the best of our human nature; but I'll never be surprised when the uglier side prevails. And how I wish our better natures won out more often. (I believe it was that better nature that drove the election results in November 2008.)
I just realized that the original article of Mr. Frazier's was from Jan '09!
Guess it's "RE-relevant"?!
citivas,
They should pay you to write a blog on this site. Well said. Speak it!
It has obviously been a while since you were incarcerated. For me, it's been a little more recently.
The BOP has passed a regulation that prisoners serving a sentence in excess of five years must start at a higher institution that a prison camp.
As far as Madoff is concerned, it appears that he will get at least an assignment of level 46 for his offense. That is calculated as:
1. Base Offense: 6 points
2. Loss in excess of $50 million: 24 points
3. More than 50 victims: 4 points
4. Harm to a financial institution: 8 points
5. Investment Adviser enhancement: 4 points
Total is 46 points or levels.
The sentence is life for all levels above 43. Even if they take away all the mandated enhancements, his level would be 30, requiring incarceration for 97 to 121 months.
As for the posting from citivas, I think she is confusing state law with federal law. Remember, there is no federal statute for murder...that is strictly a state issue.
John Black
John - Murder is indeed a federal crime, as long as it occurs within federal jurisdiction (e.g., on federal land, against a federal officer, etc.). 18 USC 1111 (Title 18 of the United States Code, section 1111). Much the same as a given state's murder statute only applies within its jurisdiction. There are other federal murder statutes as well - such as murder of a foreign diplomat, etc.
And your guidelines calculations for Madoff are surely off; you can't do guidelines calculations without all relevant information because you can't apply the departures set forth in the guidelines, let alone any variances from the guidelines. To wit, the fact that his sentence was 150 years, which none of your proposed scenarios accounted for.
Mr. Black
Just curious. And you certainly don't owe me an answer to this question. But did you commit a white collar crime in the same vein as Bernie?
I don't know from points. (The ones you've outlined in your response, that is.) But this afternoon on NPR, there was a piece covering the Madoff sentencing. In it, it was stated that conviction in a Federal court mandates that you must serve 85% of your sentence before being considered for parole. So that, effectively, Bernie OUGHT to exit this mortal coil from the Federal pen when his number's up. How does that % mesh with your point system?
And as for civitas' very well-written commentary, I think that he/she was simply addressing the disparate state of justice in this country when the law so frequently and overtly favors the fates of the "haves." And since, concurrently, a disproportionate number of the poor probably come from minorities, they are, by extrapolation, over-represented in the prison population.
And if there's no Federal Statute for murder, what happens when someone walks into a Post Office, or a Federal Court building, and fatally wounds one or more people? Just curious.
Excellent blog Mr. Frazier, I shall make it a point to read you more often.
Very good thoughts by citivas as well. thumbup.
Very well written and thoughtful. Thanks
"Prisoners run prisons". I've never thought about it like that. Also, it's horrible that the idea of being elderly in prison would be preferable to being in a nursing home, but I suspect you're right. At least judging by the nursing home my father was in for a couple of months before we moved him.
John Black--interesting about how long Madoff could serve and how his sentence breaks down. If you come back to the site, it would be interesting to hear if you think he really would get life or the reduced sentence.
pickwickianmom,
First, if you are at a "Camp", in BOP terms a "FPC", life really is not that bad, if you don't mind being apart from family, work and life as we all know it. No matter what anyone says, it is not "Club Fed"...it is prison, pure and simple. You are apart from everyone you love, and that is the real punishment. By the way, the food at Ashland FPC really sucks.
Do I think Madoff will get life? Whether he does or not is almost immaterial. At his age, 15 years is a life sentence. In order to get to that level, the court would have to find that he only lost $1 million, very unlikely.
That said, however, a good lawyer could easily argue causation, in other words, he did not cause the sell off over the last year.
Another defense that could be used is Madoff didn't take the money, at least not all of it. Sure he lived well and by most standards, quite lavishly. But he did not enrich himself by anything like $50 billion. Most of that loss probably came from "over reporting" earnings.
The other thing is, despite what the SEC likes to claim, operating a Ponzi scheme may or may not be illegal. What is illegal is the sale of a security to another investor and not divulging sufficient information for that investor to properly value the instrument being purchased.
The SEC wants to say that a Ponzi scheme is using new investor money to pay old investors. But that may or may not be fraudulent. If the new investors were told that they were paying old investors, but that the enterprise they were acquiring was valued at fair value, I'm not sure a securities violation happened.
But this gets too involved for a comment. Sorry to be so wordy.
John Black
Prison royalty? are you kidding me? I suspect that assessment is more than just a bit wrong.
First, this isn't some "club-fed" he's going to, it's a maximum security federal prison, where the men are men and the weak are very nervous.
1. He's an old man, not a father figure, in that place old=weak and weak=victim.
2. He's a thief who ruined lives and stole BILLIONS, someone who supposedly has that kind of money will be exploited for protection, if he can't pay, he won't be protected.
3. There are more than enough young, hardened fellows who would love to make their "cred" by being known as the bad-ass who took out made-off.
4. Maybe the grandparents of some prison staff lost their life savings, that doesn't bode well for the old man either.
5. He's arrogant, self serving and spoiled beyond belief, which means he's going to immediately piss off everyone around him.
6. He's likely a virgin in the "prison-love" meaning of the word, which will make him a commodity.
No, he won't be "prison royalty", he'll just be another bitch.
And that's just what he deserves to be.
Bernie won't have a "daddy" at a super-max- they're single man cells and there is NO contact with each other
jblack010 I am sure made up that comment to confuse the issue. This is why the system doesn't work. The thugs and the meanies think nothing about being thoughtless or mean, or even criminal. Obviously taking peter's money to make paul think he is making gains in the market, is basic Ponzi 101.
How can a man who uses words like opprobrium end up in prision?
fly--
You surely realize that being well-educated and having come from a place of privilege doesn't "innoculate" one from becoming a sociopath.
Wouldn't life be so much easier were that the case.
As for me, I think that someone who's been endowed with a lot of material and emotional advantage who still chooses this despicable path should be held MORE accountable for his offenses than someone who grew up with none of those things and commits crimes. Both people did not have equal amounts of strife to overcome. And the person whose birth has blessed him with the decided advantages in life, and who still destroys all the possibilities afforded by his position, merits the greater shame. He deserves to sit in Dante's innermost circle of Hell. Because he took great talents and committed great treachery with them; he squandered them and, in so doing, caused great harm to many.
I'm so glad to read this article. I was wondering about exactly this issue a couple days ago, in particular, whether the other convicts would be angry with Madoff or call him OG.
Thanks Mansfield and Daily Beast!
Very interesting and well written piece. Thanks for that.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
Madoff will help the right people in the prison system to gain the safety and respect he deserves. Gang bangers, sadists, and anti-Semites outside the prison walls want to see him suffer. But old man Madoff is too powerful and clever to let them get the best of him.
This man has a really interesting writing style and a fascinating point of view. Thanks, Mansfield.
More terrific writing from Mr. Frazier. Thanks for this!!
Bernie will rule the roost. The scope of the money he possessed and which ran through his hands will make him a prison star. His classy demeanor, as well. What he will likely miss the most is all that good penthouse food. It's impossible to eat crap after you've been feeding your body the best. All those chemicals and preservatives, omega-3 deficient foodstuffs will drive him to distraction. Hopefully, Ruthie will bring him food baskets from Fairway and Citarella. Otherwise, he should do just fine, and Bubba will kiss his ass, not assault it.
I'm sure Madoff has some money stashed somewhere - and, like all prisoners with money, his lawyers will figure out how to funnel it to gang leaders and corrupt correction officers.
Once bribed, they will see to it that Madoff lives in comfort and safety while in prison, and will protect him from anybody who wishes him ill.
Considering the fact that Madoff robbed rich people, I'm sure that he'll face a lot less hostility in prison than he would on the streets of the Upper East Side.
His intelligence and education will also work in his favor.
Most prisoners are poorly educated - with many outright illiterate. These days, with so many undocumented immigrants being jailed for identity theft prior to deportation, many federal prisoners don't even speak English (and many can't even read and write in Spanish).
An educated man like Madoff can make himself a lot of friends - and even earn some money - by helping prisoners write letters home, reading letters from home to them, doing the law library research and brief writing for their appeals ect.
That will go a long way to earn him good will in the joint.
And that's assuming he even ends up in a regular maximum security facility.
Considering his age, Madoff surely has SOME medical problem or other. All his lawyers have to do is get a doctor to make the right statements on an affidavit to get him sent straight to the federal prison hospital in Rochester, Minnesota.
Thank you.
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