FOR SKILLING AND LAY, NO POSH PUNISHMENT

The elimination of notoriously comfortable "Club Fed" lockups, along
with a recent trend of handing out hard time to Enron-related
convicts, could mean Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling will share prison
space with drug dealers, child pornographers and gang members.

There was a time when white-collar criminals could count on assignment
to minimum-security prisons, known as "Club Feds" because of their
cushy conditions -- dorm-style living, fewer guards, fewer
restrictions -- particularly compared to traditional units.

But the U.S. Bureau of Prisons has closed four of those facilities
recently, and government rules require nonviolent inmates with long
sentences to be upgraded to more severe security levels designated as
"low" or "medium."

Experts predict Skilling and Lay are likely to receive sentences of 12
to 25 years.

And any punishment of more than 10 years practically guarantees a more
secure prison because sentence length is a major factor in placement,
said Alan Ellis, past president of the National Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers and a specialist in sentencing and prison
placement of white-collar offenders.

Common inhabitants of such units are drug felons, scam artists, child
pornographers and even people with violent pasts who have shown good
behavior in more secure units.

Sentences of 25 years or more likely will mean a step up to medium
security, Ellis said.

"Now you're having carjackers, bank robbers, people with assaultive
histories and people doing life who kept their noses clean and were
moved down," Ellis said.

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake is scheduled to hand down punishment
Sept. 11.

The only people convicted in Enron-related trials before Thursday were
all sent to low-security prisons despite clean backgrounds and
sentences of less than four years each.

Former Enron Treasurer Ben Glisan Jr., who pleaded guilty to
conspiracy, began serving his five-year stretch in a low-security unit
before being shipped down to a minimum-security camp once he began
cooperating with prosecutors.

Federal judges can recommend destinations, but the prison system
ultimately decides.

Bureau officials say they try to place prisoners within 500 miles of
home in the lowest level of security for which they qualify, but their
rules allow an inmate to be upgraded to the next level without cause.

Of course, Lay and Skilling will try to remain free on bail during
inevitable appeals. Attorneys said such bail is rare in Houston
federal courts, though, and to get one Lake must decide the two men
are not flight risks and have a "substantial likelihood" of getting
their convictions or sentences overturned.

As for prison, where California Attorney General Bill Lockyer once
remarked publicly he'd like to see Lay share a cell "with a tattooed
dude who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey,'" Houston defense lawyer
Kent Schaffer says the federal system tends to be safer than state
lockups.

"The Bureau of Prisons is going to want to make sure Ken Lay is not
assaulted in prison," Schaffer said. "If somebody of that stature is
assaulted in any way, that's going to be really bad PR for the United
States government."