KEY POINTS:
"A bore, but quite endurable."
That is how Conrad Black, the disgraced newspaper baron, is publicly styling his imminent incarceration at the pleasure of the US Federal Bureau of Prisons.
But as the peer sped off with his wife and daughter from a Chicago courthouse earlier this
week, after learning his sentence will be six and a half years, only they really know whether he is genuinely that relaxed about the reality of life behind bars.
Black has been ordered to report to a federal jail on 3 March.
The delay is less a courtesy to the Blacks, who get to have a final family holiday season together and a chance to get their affairs in order, than a convenience for the US prison system, which is overcrowded, understaffed and needs to time to find a suitable bunk for its new charge.
Black is hoping to be sent to the federal correctional institution in Coleman, Florida, 50 miles out of Orlando and at least in the same state as his beloved Palm Beach mansion, which wife Barbara Amiel can use as a base for visiting.
However, there are no guarantees.
Black is right in one sense.
The routines of prison life are certain to be monotonous.
The 6am wake-up calls, the regimented mealtimes, the insistence on lights out, the tedious, menial work assigned to prisoners for between 12 cents and 40 cents an hour - all are sure to be grindingly dull for a man who, not so long ago, could flit as the mood took him between the London's House of Lords, his Toronto business offices, and the cocktail parties of the New York billionaire set.
But for the highest profile white collar criminals inside the US prison system, it is the sheer loss of control that is the hardest thing to adjust to.
These are executives whose word was law inside their empires, who planned and strategised and calculated to achieve precisely the outcome they wanted for themselves and their companies.
It is perhaps for that reason that so many executive criminals seem to throw themselves into teaching other inmates, a rewarding way of guiding others, whether it is instructing them in maths, in Spanish, or even in yoga (Martha Stewart's option).
Lawyers say that most of the white collar criminals who go to trial can also be found, at least in the early months of their sentence, poring over legal documents and looking forward to visits from their lawyers as much as from their spouses.
"Working on an appeal, it is the equivalent of digging an escape tunnel," said one veteran defence lawyer.
In the US justice system, you get pretty much what it says on the tin.
There is no parole in the federal system.
With "good time" - a reward for keeping one's nose out of trouble - Black could perhaps be out in 69 months, at the age of 69, but a prisoner can expect to serve at the very least 85 per cent of his sentence.
Little humiliations continue even after release: a mandatory drug test for felons, routine checks by a probation officer, perhaps an electronic ankle bracelet for months.
It is no wonder that white collar criminals with connections abroad put so much of their legal resources into trying to get out of the US.
David Radler, Black's business partner of 37 years, agreed to plead guilty and help prosecutors, tempted in large measure by a promise that he should serve his agreed 29-month sentence in Canada, where he can expect to be out in barely a year.
The three British bankers known as the NatWest Three fought extradition to the US for several years, and have also agreed to a plea bargain in return for being shipped home soon.
Meanwhile, Kobi Alexander, a technology company boss accused of manipulating his share options, fled the US entirely.
He has been living proudly in Namibia since last year with his family, enrolling his children in local schools and pouring money into philanthropic causes to impress his new hosts, who have no extradition treaty with the US.
Mr Alexander is cocking a snook at the US department of justice, whose pursuit of white collar crime has intensified in the past decade.
As much as justice being done, it is keen that justice is being seen to be done, and white collar criminals sometimes suffer indignities others may not, such as the "perp walk" where they are walked through a public place in handcuffs so the media can get a good photo.
The US attorneys office can scramble its media advisors and have a press conference up and running within an hour of a verdict.
Businessmen, they calculate, are worried as much about their reputations as they are about their liberty.
In prison, they have much time to chew over what they have lost.
- INDEPENDENT
