WHAT BERNIE MADOFF CAN EXPECT IN PRISON

Bernie, you are about to face a living hell. How I do I know? In
1985, I was sentenced to 15 years to life under New York's draconian
Rockefeller Drug Laws for a first-time nonviolent drug crime. So I
know all too well what your life is going to be like.

Madoff, who agreed to a plea deal, is about to spend the rest of his
life behind bars for stealing an estimated $65 billon from thousands of people.

Right now, Bernie, you are probably in a daze. You are thinking about
the life sentence you are facing. You are sitting in your cell most
likely under surveillance because they do not want you to try to kill
yourself. That's why the court officers told you to remove your belt
and shoe lace strings or anything you can use to hang yourself in
your holding cell.

The thought of killing myself did not occur to me when I first when
in, but after a few hours in a cell it did.

From there, it will only get worse.

Your identity will be taken away when you are stripped naked and
ordered to bend over and spread your butt cheeks. You will be forced to comply.

If you don't, the officer conducting the search will call the "goon
squad," about a half-dozen killing machines who will come in dressed
in battle gear, armed with batons. They won't care that you are 70.
They will strike blows in a way that will not leave bruises because
you are a high-profile case.

Once you are sitting in your temporary cell awaiting sentencing,
officials will isolate you from the general population. By this time,
several contracts on your life have been taken out. Even those who
are not contracted will want to take your head off so they can get
their name in the paper.

And it's only the beginning.

When you are sentenced in June, your knees will buckle because the
possibility of spending the rest of your life in prison will become a
reality. Your individual humanity will be over, and you will become
part of the prison collective.

After sentencing, you will be sent to federal facility that is an
indoctrination center. Here, the authorities will teach you how to do
time. They tell you the rules.

Your life will be full of rules and regulations. It's something that
is valuable because it can save your life in prison.

By this time, the predators will try to befriend you. No doubt they
will be scamming you to try to find out if and where you buried some
of the money.

They will try to out-scam the ultimate scammer.

At first, they might offer you some smokes or some food to develop a
relationship. Maybe some will offer you protection. It will be a tough for you.

Like all prisoners serving a long sentence, you will eventually learn
what doing time is all about. It's not about only marking X's on your
calendar. It's about learning how to live in the present, no matter
how bleak the present is.

Dwelling on your past and hoping for the future will become as
painful as it is futile. You will have to forget about life on the
outside to maintain your sanity on the inside.

You have a tough road ahead of you. When you look in the mirror you
will think of your crime and how you wound up in prison. You will
re-live your crime over and over. And as you pace back in forth in
your small prison cell, the reality of you dying in that cell as a
broken man will recur, over and over.

I suspect the victims of your scams won't shed many tears over your plight.