by Although it is not publicly known where “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” star Jen Shah will report to prison on Friday, her lawyers have pushed for her to serve her 6½-year sentence for wire fraud in a federal prison camp.
Experts say that if you have to serve time, the minimum security institutions are the best places to do it.
“A minimum security camp is obviously the gold standard for a defendant,” said Danny Cevallos, a legal analyst for NBC News.
While not that luxurious”Shah Ski Chalet” – he $7.4 million, 9,400 sf, five-bedroom mansion where Shah lived in the first two seasons of “Real Housewives”: Federal prison camps don’t have the cells, barbed wire, or strict regulations characteristic of higher-security prisons.
Instead, inmates live in dormitory-style housing, and there is little to no fencing around the facility. according to the Bureau of Prisons.
The camps house mostly nonviolent offenders serving short sentences or who committed white-collar crimes, according to Cevallos and criminal defense attorney Alan Ellis.
Ellis said the camps are “more relaxed” than low-security prisons, which have double-fenced security perimeters and a higher staff-to-inmate ratio, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
Shah’s request
At Shah’s sentencing last month, where the judge handed down her sentence for running a telemarketing scheme that defrauded seniors out of thousands of dollars, her lawyer requested that she serve her sentence at Camp Bryan Federal Prison, a women’s camp in Texas with more than 500 inmates, about 100 miles northeast of Austin.
Shah’s lawyers did not respond to questions this week about where he will serve.
Court documents show that the judge recommended that she be housed in a facility. in the center-south region, which spans Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico and includes FPC Bryan and several minimum-security satellite camps, which are adjacent to higher-security camps. There are 65 satellite camps and seven stand-alone federal prison camps across the country, according to a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson.
Inmates’ locations are not available until after they are in custody, and their assigned facilities depend on several factors, including the level of security they require, their medical needs, proximity to their residences and where beds are available, the prison said. spokesman.
‘Like having a gap year’
Life inside the camps is structured around work and programs, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
He manual for FPC Bryan says inmates earn between 12 cents and $1.15 an hour for their jobs, which include food service and factory work.
In satellite camps, inmates may hold jobs within higher-security institutions or in off-site programs.
When not working, inmates at FPC Bryan can take classes in business skills, foreign languages and other subjects, play sports, watch TV, do crafts and attend religious services, the manual says. They can also have visits on weekends and holidays, as well as video calls.
One of Ellis’s former clients who served time in a federal prison camp even compared it to “having a gap year” that gave him time to catch up on his reading, Ellis said.
Shah plans to use his free time to address an unspecified substance abuse problem, his lawyer said at his sentencing last month.
According to Inner City PressA New York-based investigative news agency, Priya Chaudhry told the judge that Shah wants to serve his sentence in a facility that offers a residential drug abuse program, also known as RDAP. which the Bureau of Prisons describes as its “most intensive” substance abuse treatment program. It lasts for nine months and takes up half of each day, while the other half is devoted to work, school or vocational activities, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
RDAP participants live in units separate from the general population. And if they successfully complete the program, they can earn up to a year off their sentences, according to the FPC Bryan handbook.
If Shah wins admission to the program, Cevallos said, “it’s fantastic.”
“A year is very important, especially if you are in the federal system, where you really do your time,” he added.
The early release offered by the program has also made it ripe for abuse, said Cevallos and Ellis, noting the 2019 federal indictment of three Michigan residents who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud for advising inmates on how to falsely claim substance use disorders to gain admission to an RDAP.
Samuel Copenhaver and Constance Moerland were each sentenced to one year in prison and three years of supervised release, court records show. Tony Tuan Pham was sentenced to six years in prison and three years of supervised release, according to the Department of Justice.
The FPC Bryan handbook notes that applicants are screened for documentation showing a history of substance abuse. If such testing is available, prospective participants meet with drug abuse program coordinators to determine if they can meet the American Psychiatric Association criteria for a diagnosis of a substance use or dependence disorder.
When she pleaded guilty in July, Shah told the judge she had been treated two years earlier “for alcohol and depression,” court documents show. Shah told the judge that she was not hospitalized for treatment.
Shah could also earn up to 54 days a year off his sentence for good behavior, according to the Bureau of Prisons policy. For Shah, that could shave more than 320 days off his sentence.
If she earns that good behavior time and completes the RDAP, Shah could be released sometime in 2027.
Celebrities are no stranger to camping
If Shah ends up at FPC Bryan, he could be there with other high-profile inmates. The judge who sentenced Elizabeth Holmes in November for defrauding investors in her failed blood-testing company, Theranos, recommended that she serve her 11-year sentence at FPC Bryan, court documents show.
Todd and Julie Chrisley, who flaunted their opulent lifestyle and family drama on the long-running reality show “Chrisley Knows Best,” began serving their sentences for bank fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to defraud US in federal prison camps last month.
Todd Chrisley was sentenced to 12 years in FPC Pensacola, a men’s prison in Florida, while Julie Chrisley was sentenced to the satellite camp in Lexington Federal Medical Center in Kentucky, a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson confirmed.
The couple’s daughter, Savannah Chrisley, 25, he said on his podcast with which he can send emails and visit his parents. She said her father works in the camp chapel and her mother plays cards and attends church.
Jerry Harris, a rising star of the Netflix documentary series “Cheer,” is serving his 12-year prison sentence on federal charges related to images of child sexual abuse at the FMC Lexington medical center, a spokesman for the Office of Prisons.
Following her 2014 fraud conviction, “Real Housewives of New Jersey” star Teresa Giudice served 11 months in Danbury Federal Correctional Institution in Connecticut, a low-security prison with an adjacent minimum-security satellite camp. After releasing her, she told Andy Cohen of Bravo that she was in the part of the camp that had no cells, bars, or fences.
Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin spent 11 days and two months, respectively, at FCI Dublin, a low-security prison with an adjacent satellite camp 91 miles southwest of Sacramento, California, for their roles in the so-called Varsity Blues college admissions scheme. .
Martha Stewart served a five-month sentence for insider trading at FPC Alderson in West Virginia in late 2004 and early 2005, spending her time teaching yoga, taking pottery classes, scrubbing floors, and cleaning offices.
