Do countries other than the U.S. have cushy prisons for the rich and powerful?

[Bridget_Burke]

In the USA, prisons are classified by security level. Here’s a rundown for Federal facilities. Alderson, where Martha Stewart did her time, has indeed been called “Camp Cupcake.”

In fact, Alderson has a special history.

Seventy-five years ago, the first federal prison for women opened in Alderson, West Virginia, as the Federal Industrial Institution for Women. The founding vision was for a “community of women working together under the guidance of other women.” In the early 1920’s a prison reform movement grew out of concerns of imprisoned activists in the Women’s Suffrage movement who experienced harsh prison conditions for acts of civil disobedience. These women returned to speak of the indignities and abuse they endured when held as captives in men’s prisons…

By the end of World War II, a military model of prison administration had taken hold. Soon male wardens, correctional officers, and administrative employees predominated. Today, over seventy percent of correctional officers in women’s prisons are men. Over the years, a power and control model has replaced the “women’s sphere” envisioned by Alderson’s founders…

Last year I was one among Alderson’s nearly 1,000 captive women, just one more number in a criminal justice system that presently incarcerates close to two million. I slept in the top bunk of cinderblock cube 042 — a nine by twelve foot stall in a massive and austere concrete building holding 500 women. This warehouse-like barracks, and a second one now under construction, will replace many of the vintage 1927 campus-style cottages, demolished to make room for a growing population of women prisoners, the fastest-growing — and least violent — segment of the prison population nationwide.

Martha Stewart was sent to Alderson because she’s neither violent nor an escape risk. And most of the other prisoners were neither rich nor powerful. (She’d actually requested a Connecticut prison, to make it easier for her elderly mother to visit–but her request was ignored.)

White collar criminals aren’t sent to the maximum security prisons because of the nature of their crimes. But even the “best” prison in the USA is hardly a country club.