Prison Camp: White Collar Prison
A Forum for Stories of Incarceration, Justice, and Redemption
Below is an excerpt from my essay, White Collar Prison, a different kind of hell, published in 2024 by Minutes Before Six and nominated for a Best American Essay in 2025. A link is provided after the excerpt to read the entire essay. Although recent excerpts from my forthcoming memoir have been posted here, this essay offers a more comprehensive lens into the experience of my incarceration and the dark world of modern-day communal exile.
WHITE COLLAR PRISON, a different kind of hell
In a crowded courtroom, the presiding Judge—a round Black man with a kind face—asked us to stand. Something deliberative about him, like an uncle you could confide in after failing an exam. Though momentarily reassured, my legs trembled as a group of investors stood behind me, silently pleading for the maximum sentence. Before sentencing, the Judge delivered a lengthy narrative that was difficult to hear, the acoustics compromised by a high ceiling and a dizzing scent from the rich, paneled wood that covered the walls. I could only grasp certain phrases and the last few sentences before he announced his decision. He told me I had “already sentenced myself to a prison without bars,” something about a “prison of my own making,” and that I was not connected to humanity, “disconnected to what makes life meaningful and worthwhile.” Then, after a short pause, he sentenced me to eighty-five months in prison for two counts of wire fraud. He said I had a challenging life ahead of me. I was seventy-six years old. With eighty-five months of incarceration looming, my life was over. I left the courtroom in disgrace, leaving my family, company, and investors in financial ruin, the disconnect from humanity complete. I was assigned to a prison camp in a remote area north of Boston, FMC Devens, a former military base where the Spanish Flu began. My pre-prison research advised me to make friends slowly, live under the radar and become a ghost to the staff. A muddled brotherhood was waiting for me.
Federal prison camps represent the lowest level of security in the Bureau of Prisons’ system. Camp facilities are not like traditional prisons. There are no cells or bars or perimeter walls to climb. They are more like military barracks, where inmates reside in dormitories. Residents there are primarily non-violent offenders and others who have earned a place there based on good behavior in higher-security institutions. Most were close to their release date and motivated not to cause trouble. It was a diverse group of inmates, including drug dealers, gang members, violent offenders, and white-collar criminals. The Bureau of Prisons—BOP in inmate parlance—is the federal agency that manages the entire federal prison system and the community of individuals who have violated federal laws. Its mission is purportedly to protect the community and reclaim the criminal citizenry—the measure of its viability as a social institution. Unfortunately, like most bureaucracies, its primary mission has become its own preservation. For inmates, the BOP is an all-encompassing amalgam of every oppressive institution that has confronted them during their lifetimes, whether familial, academic, religious, or governmental authority. And for many, its authority extended to their funeral and burial. At Devens, the cemetery for departed inmates lay next to the camp’s recreation area, perfect rows of pure white crosses. An eerie tableau and a portent of things to come.
The camp was only a short distance from the main prison, a regional medical prison that treated criminals of all ages and crimes. Many of them were elderly and critically ill, and many died there. Inmates of the camp who violated camp protocols were relocated to the main prison, a frightening prospect that helped foster good behavior within the camp. Relocations to the main prison often resulted in time in the SHU (special housing unit, pronounced Shoe), essentially solitary confinement in dungeon-like conditions. Many inmates who were relocated there never returned to the camp, and their period of release was often delayed.
The camp facility comprised a low-lying industrial building resembling a giant storage shed and a crumbling recreation area adjacent. It was situated in the middle of a former golf course. The golf course was an amenity for the servicemen at the military base. Remnants of fairways and cutouts of greens were visible from the recreation area. Tall pine trees surrounded the camp’s perimeter, but through them, the main prison was visible, separated by a sunken area of shrubs, old fairways from the golf course, and a narrow brook that was probably a water hazard for golfers. It was a long building of concrete block, no windows, and three tiers of barbed wire. The gnarled circles flashed their steel teeth day and night, more frightening in the night light, their true fierceness revealed. In daylight, the barbed wire disappears into the background. But in the early evening, when the lights came on, those circles flashed bright, their shiny, unmistakable message that you were a prisoner. We’re here to hurt you, and you’re not getting out. A vast parking lot beside the building was acres of black pavement. The steel glint from hundreds of parked cars flashed its own message, the depth of staff there and its overwhelming numbers to preserve our confinement.
The camp building was initially constructed to house seventy-two inmates, but by the time I arrived, it housed one hundred and twenty-eight, all cramped into tiny cubicles in an open-floor environment of approximately ten thousand square feet. Decay was pervasive there. Mold in the showers, broken urinals and sinks, frayed sheets, stained blankets, dented lockers, a foul smell in the bathrooms, and a mossy film everywhere. The dorm for inmates was a maze of dark corridors and cubicles that was more like a barracks than a dorm. From a bird’s eye view, it resembled an experiment for mice. Fluorescent lights hung from exposed steel beams and iron pipes, some bulbs always missing or flashing. The pods were eight by seven feet, six feet high, and had no privacy. Each cubicle housed two inmates with a bunk bed, two low-lying lockers, two plastic chairs, and a narrow drawer that fit under the bunks. Every surface was hard: cinder block walls, plastic chairs, steel beds, and concrete floors. Windows that surprisingly opened lined the perimeter. But more of a curse than a benefit, and a source of conflict in the winter months. A series of fans hung on the interior walls in no particular configuration. They were turned on day and night in every season. In winter, they shaded the sound of illegal cell phones. In the summer, they were a source of conflict: “Fan-wars,” named by the inmates to describe the battles to determine the direction of the fans during the oppressive days of summer. There was no Air Conditioning. Some inmates couldn’t sleep without that noise, and others complained bitterly. I slept regardless. In prison, sleep was the only balm.
I arrived late in the fall, temperatures falling, days shorter, and the dorm freezing. In those late-fall mornings, the darkest season, inmates silently stumbled through dark corridors. I never thought that Hell would be freezing, not fire but ice, the torture of preference for the BOP. I slept in overcoats and winter hats, shivering for hours, tossing and turning my way to warmth and eventual sleep. But just when I’d managed to somehow find sleep, there was the three am count and the guard’s flashlight in my bunk, and then another hour to try and morph shaking into sleep and then the alarm would go off at five am, and it was morning and time to get up in the meat locker. I’d ask the guard about the heat, and he’d tell me to “Fuck off, because all you guys are a pain in the ass. Who’s hot, who’s cold?” And then I’d go to work in the kitchen washing dishes and scrubbing pans, but at least it was warm for five hours. I’d finish up and return to my bunk exhausted, but still cold, colder even, and ten minutes later I’d be shivering again. A different kind of Hell.
Here is a link to the complete essay, White Collar Prison
If this story resonates with you, or if you’ve wrestled with your own origin myths, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Up Next on White Collar Journal:
Wednesday (Justice Notes): HomeBridge Ventures
Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse: Daily, fragmented reflections
Sunday (Prison Camp): More portraits from prison