WEST VAN MAN UNHAPPY INMATE IN NEW YORK JAIL

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - West Vancouver's Allen Richardson is now Christopher
Perlstein, New York state inmate #71C0244.

He sits in a graffiti-etched cell in green prison pyjamas at Downstate
Correctional Facility, a maximum security processing prison at Fishkill on
the Hudson River about an hour's drive from New York City.

"He's not very happy," said his wife, Amalia Richardson, who spoke to her
husband by phone early yesterday, his first night in jail.

"He's in a cell on his own. They don't want any trouble or anything to
happen to him."

Richardson, 50, a U.S. citizen, was sent back to prison Wednesday, almost
30 years after escaping and fleeing to Canada.

He'd served three months of a four-year sentence for selling $20 of LSD to
an undercover cop while a student at Rochester Institute of Technology.

He was sent to Attica and transferred to a work camp before a deadly riot
broke out killing 43 people in 1971.

When a guard told him he was being returned to Attica, he escaped and
crossed the border to hide out in Toronto.

Richardson, whose real name is Perlstein, changed his identity and made a
new life in West Vancouver, working at UBC's Triumf laboratory.

For Amalia, 52, it has been one of the hardest weeks of her life.

Her mother, in England, suffered the latest in a series of strokes and
Amalia may have to fly back at a moment's notice.

But she's caught in an emotional tug of war, as U.S. prison authorities
have cleared her to visit her husband in jail today.

"I really feel I want to see Allen," said Amalia. "I hate to say it but my
priority is more with him than my mother."

She said her husband didn't say much in the monitored phone call.

"His cell is full of graffiti and the guards just laugh because that's what
the prisoners do," she said. "I don't think he's badly treated. He said
it's maximum security and not very nice."

Richardson's clothes were taken away and will be mailed to his New York
lawyer, Michael Kennedy.

"They wouldn't send them back to Canada," added Amalia."I go from being
really upset to really angry. This shouldn't be happening."

Prison spokeswoman Linda Foglia said Richardson will stay at the Fishkill
prison for two weeks or less until it's decided where he'll serve the rest
of his sentence.

Meanwhile, his lawyers are working to get him an early parole hearing and
say he'll likely end up in a medium security jail.

On Wednesday, Judge John Connell upheld Richardson's original sentence,
saying he could not find fault in the original judge's decision.

Connell also said that, while Richardson would have got probation in a
similar case today, reducing his sentence could send the wrong message to
other prisoners considering escape.