Disgraced former Hollinger chairman Conrad Black has lost his last-minute appeal to stay out jail and will have to report to the slammer by Monday. He has been assigned to the US Bureau of Prison's low security Federal Correctional Institute at Coleman in Florida (picture above) but Black's lead appellate counsel, Andrew Frey, is still hopeful of getting a reversal with the appeal.
Still, as Report on Business points out, there is the possibility that judges might overturn some counts, there's less chance of reversing the one count where he was was the only defendant convicted – obstruction of justice when he was filmed taking boxes of documents out of his Toronto office. They have him cold there.
So what kind of life can Black expect from Monday. Some insights from the Toronto Star's Rick Westhead:
"It's only an hour's drive from Black's Palm Beach home, but in lifestyle the change figures to be jarring.
"Rather than restaurants and cycling, Black faces daily monotony, a complete lack of privacy and an uncomfortable separation from family and friends.
"While Black has a taste for fine cuisine – days before his sentencing, the one-time newspaper baron ordered a roasted beet salad and a "duo of veal" during a dinner with the Star – his menu options, starting perhaps with Monday lunch, will be more pedestrian.
" 'There's a lot of spaghetti and fried and baked chicken, macaroni and cheese,' says Walt Pavlo, who was sentenced to 48 months for corporate fraud and spent time in U.S. minimum-security prisons. 'It's like mediocre high-school cafeteria food, lots of starch.'
"The Bureau of Prisons protocol calls for him to be strip-searched and fingerprinted, subjected to a DNA test and made to change into a prison uniform.
" 'The clothes that you wear in will be mailed back to your home … so tell your spouse to expect them,' recommends The Ultimate Guide to Life Inside (and after) Federal Prison, a 200-page book sold online.
"However, the clothes don't always make it home. 'Possibly a (prison guard) may take a nice item of your clothing home, or lose them or simply toss them in the garbage. So I do suggest that you report wearing clothes that you would be willing to throw in the garbage …'
Westhead says Black's biggest challenge will be boredom. And he'll have to get used to sharing a cubicle with some lucky guy in a 2.1-by-2.5-metre space.
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