As Martha Stewart, former Enron executives and numerous other high-profile convicts have recently discovered, Club Fed—the cushy federal prisons where inmates sunbathe after playing tennis and croquet—is a myth. Stories of white-collar criminals serving their sentences at de facto country clubs are nothing more than tenacious urban legends kept alive by the national media, defense attorneys who want to calm their clients and Federal Bureau of Prisons alumni who served their sentences decades ago. I know, because I’ve been there. In December 1996 I was convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to serve one year and one day in federal custody.

When I reported to prison in January 1997, I was shocked to find that the majority of the inmates at Federal Prison Camp Eglin in Florida, the facility for which the term Club Fed was originally coined, were there as captives in the war on drugs. These real criminals were hardly well-bred Ivy League grads who had misled shareholders or misused company funds. They were common street criminals. Furthermore, the prison itself was actually a prison with bars, locks and guards. What about the golf and tennis? What about the beach that I had read so much about? What about rubbing elbows with Fortune 500 executives? There must have been some mistake. Why was I, a white-collar offender, housed with common criminals? The answer—although obvious on its face—came to me only in time: I was housed with common criminals because I was one.

Prior to learning firsthand the hard realities of incarceration, I clearly differentiated between real criminals and those with white collars. Like many of us, I was so focused on thoughtless violent crime and the terrible toll that drugs were taking on our cities that I rationalized the minor impact that briefcase bandits have on our society.

In prison, however, such distinctions became moot. The color of my collar, the socioeconomic success I might have achieved prior to breaking the law, entitled me to no better, and no worse, treatment than any other federal inmate. My criminal conduct—the fraudulent filing of an insurance claim ultimately prosecuted under the federal government’s mail fraud statutes—had exposed me to one of the last great equalizers in today’s society: federal prison.

Executive Perps
As an inmate, I lost my individual identity and became an eight-digit number—inmate 26086-086 to be exact. Like each of the more than 800 men housed at FPC Eglin in 1997, I wore a khaki uniform and was obliged to perform 40 hours of work each week, for which I was paid 12 cents an hour. I lived in one of five 180-man dormitories, shared shower and bathroom facilities with 90 men and had to stand in line for up to an hour to make a 15-minute phone call. I was allowed visits every-other weekend and was served three calorically adequate meals each day.

The culture within a federal penitentiary is one of regulations, hierarchies and learned survival techniques. To avoid physical altercations, I quickly learned the rules of inmate etiquette: I should never communicate with staff members nor touch anything that did not belong to me. Despite the fact that I could identify with senior Bureau of Prisons staff more readily than with my fellow inmates, to act on such a notion would be inappropriate.

More importantly, however, I learned that I was a crook, no better than the drug dealers and common thieves who occupied nearby bunks. I had broken the social contract, and had nobody but myself to blame for being in prison. I ultimately realized that the most important step I could take in learning from the situation, making it tolerable and ultimately rebuilding my life was to accept full responsibility for the consequences of my actions. This is a lesson I try to pass along to each person with whom I work.

I now make my living assisting men and women who, like me, broke the social contract and face a period of incarceration. I prepare them for the formidable emotional and physical challenges that they face. I also help them to own up to what they have done and to make peace with their choices. Despite the self-serving excuses and tortured rationales these individuals often offer, the fact is that the federal government does not prosecute small personal matters; it prosecutes crimes and the criminals who commit them. 

David Novak is author of DownTime- A Guide to Federal Incarceration, and is CEO of David Novak Consulting.