A Glimpse At Madoff's Tenure At The MCC

Bloomberg does a good analysis of the culture shock associated for Bernie in moving from his penthouse to his temporary confinement at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, which is characterized as a "horrendous" jail. Larry Levine, who himself served 10 years in federal prisons for securities fraud and drug trafficking has this to say about what lies in store for Bernie.

“Madoff isn’t going to be real popular. All the guys there will have wives or parents who are losing their homes or their jobs or who can’t send money to them anymore. Everybody’s going to be blaming Bernie.”

Some more descriptions of what lies in store for Bernie:

“In the beginning, he will be besieged by mail that will be threatening and accusatory. There will be people trying to scam him and people who think he’s hiding money. There will be inmates asking for money, and you don’t want them to disbelieve you when you say you don’t have it.”

So in which jail will Bernie end up ultimately?

Madoff probably would be assigned to a low- or medium-security facility, said Levine, whose firm, Wall Street Prison Consultants, is in Los Angeles. Medium-level lockups usually house inmates in cells and are ringed with electronic escape-detection systems, the bureau site says.

Because crimes such as rape and murder are usually prosecuted under state laws, “in general, the federal system is less violent,” Henning said. “Madoff will be put in with the least violent.”

Madoff, who is Jewish, may be assigned to one of several U.S. facilities in the New York area, including the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, 70 miles from Manhattan, where ultra-Orthodox Jews run religious services inside the prison, he said.

The financier may be sent instead to a low-security facility at Fort Dix, New Jersey. It’s next to a minimum-security camp housing former fund manager Martin Armstrong, founder of now-defunct Princeton Economics International Ltd., who’s serving a five-year sentence for securities fraud.