|  | | 2011 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
Chiesi’s New Prison Home More Camp Cupcake Than Chained Heat’
Katherine Burton
Bloomberg. October 18, 2011
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EXCERPT Danielle Chiesi won’t need her pearls and stiletto heels for a while. For the next 30 months, it’ll be khakis and work boots. Chiesi, the 45-year-old femme fatale analyst who pleaded guilty to securities fraud in the biggest U.S. insider-trading case on record, is set to arrive today at Federal Prison Camp Alderson in West Virginia. She’ll be serving time for passing illegal stock tips to hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, who was sentenced last week to 11 years in federal prison. Alderson, nestled in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, ranks among the cushiest federal prisons. It’s more college campus than “Chained Heat,” the 1983 exploitation film about women in jail. The red brick, Georgian Revival buildings of Camp Cupcake, as former inmates call Alderson, were modeled after Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. There are no fences, barbed wire or guard towers. For the 1,166 prisoners, tedium is a bigger threat than violence. Even so, for educated professionals like Chiesi who are used to calling the shots, the prison experience can be devastating, said Herbert Hoelter, head of the nonprofit National Center on Institutions and Alternatives in Baltimore. “Every decision is made for you -- when you work, when you eat -- it doesn’t vary,” he said. “You feel useless,” added Hoelter, who provided pre-incarceration counseling to white- collar criminals Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky. The nation’s first women’s prison, Alderson opened in 1927, and counts home-entertainment guru Martha Stewart, singer Billie Holiday and Charles Manson acolyte Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (who escaped into the woods for two days in 1987 before being recaptured and transferred to another prison) as former inmates. |
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