Carolyn with some of the artwork she helped create.(InsideOutArt)

She gives a whole new meaning to insider art.

Bronx woman Carolyn Stanford, 56, has become a part-time art dealer for inmates at prisons, helping them turn their canvases into profit.

Ms. Stanford told DNAinfo.com that she first came up with the idea while visiting her son in a California prison, where a fellow inmate offered to help her with a T-shirt business she was running at the time. The relationship developed when he started sending her full canvases instead.

She now works with around seven federal inmates in a much more beneficial exchange than prisons are used to: Carolyn sends them supplies and orders for paintings, along with the proceeds from the previous painting's sale. In return, they send her their work.

Subjects include the rich and famous. (InsideOutArt)

Once the paintings are complete, the mother of one, who has had a multitude of family members behind bars, gets to work, turning them into greetings cards or reproduction prints. She then sells them through her company Inside Out Art.

The images range from pictures of family and friends to landscapes and celebrities, one even featuring a larger than life Biggie Smalls.

"Prisoners can be very limited in their life choices," Ricki Gold, of veteran prison arts program Rehabilitation Through the Arts told The Observer. "They have this path that they seem doomed to follow. Painting allows them to think differently and consider other choices."

Tabber Benedict, the Sherman McCoy of our time. (Patrick McMullan)

Tabber Benedict, one of The New York Observer’s "Gatsbabies," who almost killed a man during a drunk driving incident in the Hamptons two years ago, is taking his upcoming prison term in stride. The night before he was to be handed down a sentence of up to 10 years in prison for plowing his GMC Acadia into a 45-year-old teacher named Steven Dorn in 2011, Mr. Benedict threw himself a party at Bungalow 8 (or whatever we're calling it now. Number 8? The former Bungalow 8?).

He told friends that the party was in honor of his upcoming departure ... for Europe.

A ridiculous way to save face in the off chance any of his friends read the news, the 35-year-old finance lawyer threw a bash on January 24, where he spun tales of the exotic travels for which he'd soon be departing, the Post reported today. He was given the space for free because he knew someone who ran the door. (Obviously.)

And yet ... the 150 or so attendees were "shocked" to discover that the following morning, Mr. Benedict was not setting sail for Venice, but was sitting in court, apologizing to the man he hit while drunk and awaiting the judge's sentence. Well, one person wasn't taken totally off-guard. Gatsbaby and frenemy Justin Ross Lee told the paper: "I feel terrible for Tabber because I know there's no table service where he's headed. He's the most the pretentious person I ever met."

Then again, that might be a compliment coming from Mr. Lee, who runs the handkerchief line Pretentious Pocket. We just hope Benedict's jumpsuit has a breast pocket.

A re-creation of what didn't happen to Justin Bieber. (Getty)

During a recent gig at Madison Square Garden, Justin Bieber was not, we repeat, was NOT, strangled to death with a paisley tie and then castrated in a plan hatched by a convicted child rapist and murderer serving time in a New Mexico prison. Once again: this did not happen.

But it almost did.

The strange story begins with Dana Martin, a 45-year-old with a Justin Bieber tattoo on his calf, who is serving out a life sentence in Las Cruces for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Vermont girl in 2000. Mr. Martin met parolee-to-be Mark Staake in prison, and hatched a plan to have Mr. Staake and his nephew Tanner Ruane prune Mr. Bieber of his plums during his November 28 concert at Madison Square Garden. Each testis was worth $2,500, according to The New York Post, which, most tween fans well tell you, is quite a low-ball number (woof) for such pricey family jewels.

The other element of this totally fail-proof plan was Mr. Staake and Mr. Ruane strangling Mr. Bieber to death with a paisley tie. Yes, it had to be paisley. No, the color didn't matter. It just had to be paisley.

Luckily, when the bumbling duo were picked up separately by the authorities, their plan was easily traced back to Mr. Martin, as he had strangled his last victim with a paisley tie.

For now, Mr. Bieber's balls remain safe. And probably insured for much more than $2,500, though lord knows some people *cough*ScooterBraun*cough* would probably be happy to have Mr. Bieber remain a prepubescent castrato for the rest of his life.

(Courtesy: AndreaPeyser.com)

The New York Post’s tender-hearted angel of mercy, Andrea Peyser, is best known for the deeply humanistic perspective with which she handles the sensitive criminal proceedings of our legal system. Less well appreciated is her concern for the good physical hygiene of those society has cast aside.

“My advice to Pedro: Don't pick up the soap.”—on Sen. Pedro Espada, Jr., May 15, 2012

“Enjoy the communal showers, Sen. Piggy.”—on Sen. Espada, Jr.,  April 27, 2012

“...the boys can dine on the prison's famed kosher cuisine while enjoying warm showers.”—on Sen. Carl Kruger and Micahel Turano, May 3, 2012

“... guaranteed to spend years in the company of large and hairy individuals you wouldn't want to meet in the shower.”—on Cameron Douglas, April 21, 2010

“...he's going away for a very long time—permanently trading life in a mansion for...shared showers with men half his age.”—on O.J. Simpson, December 6, 2008

“...Bernie might be singing in the communal prison shower by now.”—on Bernie Madoff, January 13, 2009

“The monster who once hid in the shadows and called the shots must from now on cower in the shower.”—on Peter Braunstein, May 24, 2007

“As she spends her days stocking up on unfamiliar cotton underwear and liquid soap—safer for those communal showers—it might seem high time for the sponge-headed blonde to take responsibility for her crimes.”—on Paris Hilton, May 8, 2007

“Aha! Now we know how Martha Stewart triumphed through five months in the federal pokey. Two words: Liquid soap.”—on Martha Stewart, July 21, 2005

“Today...Martha Stewart gets busy stocking up on her supply of liquid soap—safer for those communal showers....”—on Martha Stewart, March 6, 2004

Illo: David Saracino

The Observer was arrested last Friday for entering the subway through an emergency exit. We were cuffed, frisked and led by a police officer through the station. Commuters with tote bags stared.

We found ourselves in a holding cell in the Union Square station precinct with a man named Felix, who had been brought in for sharing a MetroCard with his pregnant wife. Two others came, and then left with desk appearance tickets.

But we would be joining Felix in central booking. We had a warrant, an open container summons, a relic from a summer in 2008. Ah, right: the G Train, with that girl, drinking Sparks out of a brown paper bag.

Eventually, the two officers unlocked the cell, put us in our cuffs and walked us outside. One had a cigarette for Felix.

“Do you want to share it?” Felix asked as we stood by the police van.

An officer took the half-smoked Newport from his lips and placed it to mine. Then we got in the van and drove downtown.

The police facilities of Manhattan are convenient to the city’s hottest new club, Le Baron. We squinted across Columbus Park, trying to make out the shadows of legs on heels set to brave the black-and-red door. That night the joint was to hold a soft opening for family and friends. We would not be in attendance.

Instead we sidled up to the bars at central booking, aka The Tombs. It was an inauspicious end to what had been a highly entertaining week. On Monday, we’d downed bottle after bottle of red wine at Inoteca with a model and her friend, an actress poised to have her breakout role in one of the year’s more anticipated indie films. On Tuesday, we’d attended the after party for Coriolanus at 44, drinking double Dewar’s on the rocks alongside Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson and Jessica Chastain. Wednesday, we knocked down Ketel One cocktails at Milk Studios to toast rock photographer Aaron Stern’s new book, Everyone Must Be Announced. Then we went to the party for Haywire, at Sons of Essex, drank enough tequila and champagne to invite the guests back to our apartment and then decided to dance at Electric Room, before hitting an after party at a model’s loft in Gramercy. And Thursday, we went to the opening of Tribeca restaurant Super Linda and enjoyed super-spiked margaritas before stopping by a boozy dinner at Lucien and an after party in the basement of Acme, the Great Jones Street restaurant recently spruced up by the owners of Indochine. Upstairs at Acme guests from the premiere of Man on a Ledge still lingered, so we joined them for a drink, too.

An hour after getting locked up, we fished out a tip sheet from the Coriolanus premiere, complete with headshots lest us red-carpet reporters not recognize the less bold of the bold-faced names.

“Is that your parents?” asked a young pen-mate.

We quickly folded the tip sheet away.

It eventually became apparent that no one would see a judge until midday Saturday, so around one in the morning we started to tell stories.

“Look, my nigga, you either get out of here or you go to The Island,” a man, let’s call him Ben, said, sitting beside us. “That’s Rikers, and like most of you niggas I been there.”

“Yeah I been there,” said another man. “With this mothafucka!”

He was pointing at Felix, who had stuffed his head in a puffy jacket, trying to sleep.

“This a hotel compared to The Island,” Ben went on. “You got rats and shit, plus the showers. You ever been to the showers in Rikers? You hear screams.”

Certain topics could last for hours. They debated the merits different strains of weed. Sour or purp, the eternal question. They argued Spanish Harlem girls versus Brooklyn girls, discussing the differences anatomically and in detail. They discussed relationships. A guy who called his girlfriend on the cell’s phone got mercilessly ribbed for being mushy (“You got a pussy down there, nigga?”).

The young man to the right of us shook himself awake, mashed the tips of his fingers into his eyes. It was around 4. The florescent lights blazed and never dimmed, like a casino.

“Anyone got a light?” the young man asked.

“You ain’t got a cigarette, do ya?” someone replied.

“Nah, man,” the kid responded. “I got some bud.”

“You crazy.”

“Want some?”

“Look, what you in here for?” Ben asked.

“Gun.”

“Yours?”

“Buddy’s”

“It marked to any bodies?”

“Two.”

“Son, how old are you?”

“17.”

“Look, you’re going to The Island for longer than you’ve been living, so if I were you I’d flush that shit. Save yourself a few years.”

Breakfast was dry Corn Flakes and it came and went. Around eleven in the morning—after snow, the wives and girlfriends said through the phone, had blanketed the city—the first group was called up to see the court-appointed lawyers. And then to the courtroom, which resided somewhere in this invisible city of cells. On one side, freedom; on the other, back to The Tombs with a ticket to The Island.

It was now five in the afternoon and we had been notched into a chain gang, led up a series of spiral staircases painted shit-yellow and placed in another cell, this one with access to the public defenders. The boxes into which these lawyers came were confessional booths. The men could admit their sins and hear the necessary penance.

“But we’re both set,” Felix said.

Our friend was sitting beside us as we waited to hear our names called to see the judge. It was now nearing 8:00 p.m., 26 hours under lock and key.

“We’ll get ‘time served’ and walk out of here,” he went on. “Will you wait for me? In the lobby or some shit? We’ll walk out of here and smoke a cigarette. I wanna give you my number.”

After a day of cinderblock and cornea-burning white light, the courtroom’s soft maroons were of another world. The judge slammed a gavel clearing both the subway violation and the open container citation from our record, just as we knew he would. We were free. We’d tell this tale at movie premieres and fashion parties.

We waited awhile for Felix, and then a bit longer, until it became clear which side of the courtroom had claimed him.

That night we attended a party in the East Village thrown by a reporter for a national daily newspaper. He was moving, and had decided against transporting his liquor cabinet. The guests spent a few hours solving his problem as the snow outside crusted to ice. After a nightcap at Welcome to the Johnson’s we walked up our stairs on Houston Street and unlocked the door. It never occurred to us before, but our apartment is about the same size as a cell in central booking.

Illustration by David Saracino.

A few months after I became a member of a cheap gym in Hell’s Kitchen, it dawned on me I had visited the place only once—when I signed up. I needed professional help.

The trainer occupies an odd position in our lives: despite often being someone you would have never met outside of the gym, he’s privy to your tenderest intimacies and physical vulnerabilities. Like a parent or spouse, he criticizes your smoking, drinking and eating habits, and you actually feel guilty. You’re his boss, sort of, but he’s also yours.

I’d long thought of trainers as an indulgence of the well-to-do. Paying someone to perfect my body seemed a sexy soupçon of vanity and sloth, as decadent as having a private chef. Then again, I told myself, maybe my suffering would lend the endeavor just enough wholesomeness to preserve my radicalism. Plus, the first session was free.

“Do you work out?” my taskmaster, Bashar, asked me, 15 minutes into our introductory session, as I struggled to bench-press the bar. Since I had not done anything more strenuous, for years, than bounce along on the elliptical for the duration of a medium-length Terry Gross interview and two Rihanna singles, I lied.

He laughed. “You’re crazy. I never meet anyone like you.”

He was 33, the son of Palestinian immigrants. He was sinewy, a lean, healthy looking alternative to the Pumping Iron vogue that—news flash, gym-absentees—still hasn’t gone away. He noticed my Observer T-shirt and asked if I was a writer, and if I could write about him for “a paper people read,” like the Daily News. When I demurred, he proposed that I help him create his own magazine instead. This was the only power I had over him—the power of the pen—and he piled on more reps each time I expressed reluctance about these projects.

“I’m going to make you a monster,” he would say.

In my daily life, the idea of exposing myself to five minutes of conversation, to say nothing of an hour of criticism, from someone like Bashar would have been unthinkable. I try not to throw up around anyone, certainly not during daytime hours. I don’t talk about the circumference of my arms.

But there’s something thrilling about paying someone to yell at you, a structured reminder of one’s frailty. Soon I was working out with Bashar twice a week. He asked me what rappers I liked, then mocked what I thought was a very credible answer. We had a camaraderie, though he laughed harder than I would have preferred whenever I sat backward on a piece of exercise machinery. And I didn’t love the way he took breaks to do his own reps or jokingly admire his physique in the mirror while asking me my opinion. These were the moments when I questioned who was in charge: was I really paying to watch Bashar preen, and to feel humiliatingly inadequate? He seemed to sense when he had gone too far, bringing me a bottle of water. “We gotta help each other, you and me.”

Sure, I’d think. Whatever.

“Are you on my side, or the other side?” Bashar asked me one day while I struggled to do a push-up.

I asked him what he meant. “Most people in this gym, you know, they for the other side,” he replied. Oh. The other side. I’d seen, though not intercepted, the long gazes in the locker room. I knew what he meant, and told him which side I was on. Had I ever even tried to be straight? he wondered. No, never, I said. “So how do you know, then?” He seemed to think maybe he could help me.

This was the point when the contrived intimacies of the trainer-client relationship went from useful to annoying. I realized why I chose to share my personal life with people I liked and trusted, and kept everyone else at arm’s length. Bashar had more control over my body than anyone with whom I’d never discussed what a good baby name “Eliot” is. So this is what he thought of me? Every time I started to rattle off my gay-rights talking points, he’d laugh and say, “Gimme another set!” When I pressed him further, he offered a revelation of his own: he couldn’t be prejudiced, he said, after what he’d seen in prison.

This was unexpected. I held on to just enough anger to make it through 12 reps. This, he told me, was why he’d needed me to write an article about him—to keep him from being sent back to jail. I couldn’t do that, I knew, but now he had my attention.

Later, I decided to meet Bashar outside the gym and hear more about his past. At a midtown Starbucks, he told me that, as a child, he was “the only Arab in Washington Heights. … Everybody looked at my family as aliens. And me as well.” To fit in with his neighbors, he said, he started hanging out in a drug dealer’s apartment at 13, and ended up running errands and eventually selling drugs for him. “I think it’s called being a product of your environment,” he said. He sold cocaine, but ever used only marijuana and ecstasy, he said.

He set out on his own at 16, running the corner of 154th and Broadway. As an outsider, he had an intuitive sense of how to pit gangs of different races against one another. Eventually, though, he sold drugs to an undercover cop. He did eight months at Rikers, where he allied with black gangs though he speaks Spanish. “The Middle East is actually located in Africa,” he told me, triumphantly.

His parents didn’t approve of his exploits, though they accepted the money he earned from dealing. They didn’t speak English, he told me, and had come to America only because his uncle told them there was gold in the streets.

Thanks to their acceptance of money, Bashar’s next arrest led his parents, his brother and his sister to be arrested, too; his mom and dad each did a year for money laundering. He took a deal for nine years at age 21. His lawyer told him, “At the end of the day, whether you go to trial or not, I’ll still be playing golf.” People had told him he needed to “hold it down” in jail, and protect himself from being raped. “But when I went upstate [to Five Points Correctional Facility], you gave respect, you got respect.” He was scrawny when he entered prison, but started working out with the help of fellow inmates. The physique he spent so much time gazing at in the mirror while I struggled was not a cosmetic choice but a form of armor. No wonder he told me I needed to become a “monster”; he’d had to do the same.

In the years since his release from prison, Bashar had a difficult time finding work. Bally and Equinox wouldn’t hire him, but my smaller, independent gym did. “I started helping people,” he said, noting that he had been inspired to train by his grandmother’s struggle to touch her toes, a struggle I shared.

So training me was part of his own self-improvement regimen? That felt a little too The Help for me. I asked him if it bothered him to have a gay client. “Everybody’s just there to get healthy and get big,” he said. “We just on different boats.” You give respect, you get respect.

Soon he’d be going to jail on another conviction, as an accessory to drug dealing. He’s scheduled to return to prison on Nov. 30, for a minimum of 57 months.

“I’ve accomplished so much now, and if I go back, what?” He sounded for the first time despondent. “Start all over again?”

I’ve stopped going to the gym since the Starbucks meeting. Chalk it up to a mix of mild early-winter depression, discomfort with watching Bashar work in his last days as a free man, and guilt that even writing an article wouldn’t do him any good. I told him I’d text him a day for our next training session, but instead found myself fielding texts from him: “What happen to u?”

I feel like I’ve gained a little weight, backslid a little. Not that I’m complaining. A few pounds will be the lightest thing either Bashar or I have borne.

editorial@observer.com

Photographer: Peter Foley/Bloomberg via Getty.

Raj Rajaratnam is likely in the market for some new "inside" tips about now: how he's going to survive eleven years in prison, the sentence for the $64M worth of insider trading he was recently found guilty for that was handed down today. UPDATED: It's being suggested that Raj is going to the same prison as Bernie Madoff, The Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, N.C.

Tip #1: The South Asian Mafia doesn't have the stronghold in the pen one in his position might hope for.

The former Galleon Group chief used tipsters from the likes of I.B.M. and Intel to pick up big gains. Peter Lattman at Dealbook noted that the sentence was lighter than prosecutors had hoped for (19 to 24 years) but that it continues in a trend of harsher sentences for white collar crimes (even though "the average sentence of the 13 other defendants connected to Mr. Rajaratnam’s case has been about three years"). He also got a $10M fine—again, for $64M worth of manipulating markets, and if that sounds like a $54M difference, it is—but whatever. The guy's got larger problems at the moment. Like whoever his cell-mate's going to be.

Other reactions from around the web:

One primer on how Raj may have recieved a harsher sentence for being defiant to a testosterone-loaded government hellbent on winning: "If Rajaratnam’s sentence is enhanced because he refused to surrender his judgment, a man who has been accused of corrupting others to gain stock tips will be sentenced, in part, for showing that the government has failed to corrupt him."

Twitter: "Racism rearing its ugly head."

Also: "Madoff's pissed."

And finally: "Gordon Gecko SMH*."

*"Shaking my head."

UPDATE: We're now reading via Joe Wiesenthal at Business Insider that Rajaratnam is being sent to the same prison as Bernie Madoff. It's also known as the same prison Bernie Madoff was beaten in.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Morales and Reyes.

Movies about transgendered Latinos are not exactly on the menu every week, so the attention paid to Gun Hill Road is understandable. It’s a flawed but interesting debut by writer-director Rashaad Ernesto Green, who says he based it on his own family, without further explanation. I shudder to think.

After three years in prison for grand larceny, arms possession and selling drugs, Enrique Rodriguez, played by the riveting actor Esai Morales (La Bamba), returns to his old neighborhood in the multiracial Gun Hill Road section of the Bronx to start a new life and correct his past mistakes, only to find his whole world distorted and in ashes. His long-suffering wife, Angie (Judy Reyes), has, in his absence, been having an affair with another man, and his teenage son, Michael (newcomer Harmony Santana), has been planning a sex change while living a double life as a drag queen called Vanessa. Enrique loves his family, but finds it impossible to adjust to these violent changes and simultaneously focus on his parole officer’s warning: “Secure gainful employment or go back behind bars.”

While working as a short order cook and trying to reconnect with his estranged family, he is at first baffled (his son hates baseball and paints his toenails), then enraged. Imagine the frustration and mayhem when a macho Latino sees his only son turning into the kind of freak he witnessed in prison. (There is a hint that Enrique himself has been the victim of a sexual predator in prison when, in the opening scene, he slashes the feet of a massive inmate and gets an additional 90 days in solitary.) While Angie indulges Michael and showers the confused boy with compassion, Enrique cannot rise above and beyond his conditioning in the traditional role of masculine Puerto Rican supremacy. As Enrique brutally jams his son’s head into a sink and cuts off his hair, Michael wears his bras and hot pants and makes clandestine visits to the mother of an understanding friend who sells hormone injections and testosterone blockers. In one poignant scene, Enrique forces the boy to visit a prostitute with tragic results that lead to a near-suicide.

Gun Hill Road explores the contemporary anguish of parents who want to raise their children as reflections of their own images and troubled teens who want to forge their own identities or die. Torn between the two polar opposites, Angie becomes an enabler and Enrique falls back into his old criminal ways, while Michael searches for love and acceptance in the beds of people who want only to exploit him sexually. It’s a sad story, and Mr. Green offers no easy Hollywood solutions. The writing is predictable and off the scale in terms of trajectory. The basic plot structure never follows one idea through to resolution. Still, the performances are honest and deeply felt, framed in ways that make you feel you know exactly where every character is in relation to the world around them, including the Bronx, which becomes a geographical entity with its own perimeters. The bodegas, the clubs, the dark alleys, the crowded apartments never feel like sets. Played out against these settings, the pain of the transgendered son, torn between his passion to be a woman and the demands of a macho father he both loves and fears, and the father’s struggle to make amends for his past in a real world where integrity is no longer an option add up to a heartbreaking dilemma. Cut from the same fabric as Benjamin Bratt’s role in The Mission, it certainly is not a world many viewers will find familiar, and the disappointing midair ending that heaps even more problems on these disenfranchised people might be admirably realistic, but doubly depressing.

Still, Gun Hill Road is worth seeing for the acting. The great character actress Miriam Colon makes a brief but memorable appearance as the strong matriarch of the household, and Ms. Santana, a true transgendered teen who has never acted before, is especially wrenching. As the tortured father straddling two cultures, the talented Mr. Morales’s exploration of nuance and understatement in a difficult role might have been cheapened by a more bombastic actor, but the more he underplays his inner conflicts, the more powerful his performance grows. I’ve admired him for years, and it’s a thrill to see him in a sensitive, complex role that utilizes so many aspects of his talent. Gun Hill Road may not be a great film, but there’s no questioning the fact that he is very great in it.

rreed@observer.com

GUN HILL ROAD

Running time 88 minutes

Written and directed by Rashaad Ernesto Green

Starring Esai Morales, Judy Reyes, Harmony Santana

2/4

Last Thursday morning, Bernard Kerik's lawyer, Andrew Schapiro, called Kerik's wife, Hala, to give her the bad news before it became public. Kerik's federal appeal of the four-year sentence he was given last February, for tax fraud and lying to the White House, had been denied. 

The decision came swiftly and took Kerik, his family and his legal team by surprise. Federal appeals decisions often drag on for four to eight months. It had been just a week and a half, however, since oral arguments in the appeal of the United States of America v. Bernard Kerik were presented at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse near City Hall. 

A thin crowd of around 20 people were scattered around the dark wood gallery that morning. Ms. Kerik; Kerik's son from a previous marriage, Joe; and John Picciano, Kerik's longtime friend and corrections, police and security consulting colleague, sat in the back row.   

Kerik and his lawyers appealed his sentence on the grounds that the judge had inappropriately, and with bias, stuck him with 48 months when the guilty plea agreement called for 27 to 33. 

Judges Guido Calabresi, Reena Raggi and Joseph M. McLaughlin agreed with the government's lawyer, who in a soft monotone stated that Kerik was sentenced appropriately for "crimes over a decade" and "criminal conduct that continued into the course of the case itself"-a reference to Kerik's defiance of a gag order.

The latter violation led in 2009 to the revocation of his bail and his initial imprisonment in the Westchester County Jail, the beginning of the end of the long legal pursuit of one of New York City's most contentious public figures. 

Two days before his appeal was heard, on a Saturday morning in late March, Kerik sat before The Observer on a maroon plastic chair with his back to the wall in the visiting room of Cumberland Federal Correctional Institution in western Maryland, a low structure of salmon-colored stone blocks topped by a teal roof, six hours from New York by car. The prison could almost pass for an elementary school, and hanging that day on the wall behind Kerik were colorful quilts sown by his fellow inmates.

Kerik, now 55, seemed restless in his green uniform. His head was shaved, and his mustache was gone. Having slimmed down before self-surrendering last May, he said he has lost 70 to 80 pounds in the past year. His face was a bit worn. On a door behind him was a small sign: "Stressed is desserts spelled backwards. ... Take it one bite at a time." 

Not yet a year into his sentence, Kerik is still struggling to accept his new reality. One way or another, though, he has been dealing with prison for much of his life-as a guard, emergency enforcer and young warden at New Jersey's Passaic County Jail in the 1980s; in the New York City Department of Correction in the 1990s, when he brought a volatile Rikers Island under control using a management system he helped create; designing prisons for the king of Jordan. And now the jailer is the inmate. 

During The Observer's several visits with Kerik during his appeal, he declined to talk about the case or his prosecution. He did agree to speak about other matters via email. 

Since May 2010, he's been in Cumberland's federal minimum-security prison camp, up the hill from the site's larger and rougher medium-security facility, which houses, among others, Jeffrey MacDonald, the former Green Beret Army doctor who killed his wife and two children. The camp holds anywhere from 250 to 300 inmates at a time. "Two hundred and eighty drug dealers and me," Kerik, a former narcotics detective, said.

According to a 45-year-old former white-collar inmate at Cumberland who knew Kerik on the inside and spoke on the condition of being identified only by his first name, Darryl, the ratio is 70-30, drugs to white collar. The camp is "chock full of D.C. and Baltimore guys, and they're fiercely proud of where they're from," Darryl said. "They're high-school dropouts. Their whole lives revolved around drugs."

The camp is divided into a general section, called G Unit, and the P Unit, for inmates enrolled in the drug-and-alcohol-counseling program. Instead of cells, they live in dormitory-style cubes with bunk beds, four to six men per cube. Kerik is in a cube with four other inmates, all with between one and three years to go on their sentences.  

"I was there when he came in," Darryl said about Cumberland's latest high-profile guest. "He was a regular guy. Everybody wears green." When it came to Kerik, the camp's administration "bent over backwards to make sure he wasn't given any special treatment," just as they had with Jack Abramoff, the notorious right-wing lobbyist who served three and a half years in Cumberland and was released from the camp in June 2010, a few weeks after Kerik arrived.

During Kerik's first few months, they put him on kitchen duty. When he ran Rikers, he was known for being a hard-ass when it came to cleanliness. "They had him mopping floors, you know, to show him who's boss," Kerik's longtime friend and colleague Mr. Picciano said. As a grade-four inmate, Kerik, who amassed a fortune of millions as a security professional, now makes 12 cents an hour.

Short, avuncular and balding, Mr. Picciano was a corrections officer at Rikers before Kerik was appointed to the department by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1994. As Kerik rose, eventually to commissioner in 1998, he took Mr. Picciano with him, and eventually over to the Police Department. Mr. Picciano speaks to Kerik regularly by phone and email, and visits him most weekends, driving the 130 miles from Washington, D.C. 

Cumberland head counts are at midnight, 3 a.m., 5 a.m., 4 p.m. (a standing count) and 10 p.m. Kerik wakes between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. All the inmates eat their meals at the same time. "In the chow hall, you take an empty seat," Kerik said. "It makes no difference to me. You're not there to socialize. It's eat and get out."  

Because of his background and profile and the fact that inmates are far from on lockdown, it's natural to wonder about his safety. "Is he in danger on a daily basis?" Mr. Picciano said. "No. Could something happen to him? Absolutely. If someone wanted to make a name for himself." 

In his memoir The Lost Son, Kerik tells a story from the mid-1980s when he was assistant commander of the Sheriff's Emergency Response Team-the enforcement muscle-at the Passaic County Jail. One day, Kerik relates, someone was smoking pot in the jail day room, and when guards came to put a stop to it, a 6-foot-5, 280-pound inmate named Anthony refused to come out of the room peacefully until Kerik told him he was bringing in the dogs. They got Anthony on the elevator to go upstairs when the big man turned around swinging. "Within 10 seconds it was over, and Anthony lay on the floor unconscious," Kerik wrote.  

Kerik's tough-guy persona was never a charade. He's a black belt in tae kwon do who once taught hand-to-hand combat to Special Forces at the J.F.K. Unconventional Warfare Center. At Rikers, he was known for making surprise visits after midnight. There the department dealt with inmates "slamming" razor blades, scalpels, even knives up their asses, trying to prevent inmates from giving each other "buck fifties"-slashes that require 150 stitches or more.  

Cumberla
nd is a vacation by comparison. "There haven't been any arguments or tense moments," Kerik said.  

But according to Darryl, the former inmate, the prison is not entirely tranquil. "You had your hard heads who wanted to fight at night. Stupid things. Somebody calls somebody out. But they got put behind the wire"-that is, sent to the medium down the hill, where conditions are considerably less favorable. 

By all accounts, the camp is a fairly lax environment that functions on the honor system. Inmates share TVs and microwaves, two beat-up treadmills, two hand-me-down pool tables, a regulation basketball court, a good deal of relative physical freedom. 

"Most guys don't want to leave," Mr. Picciano said. "They'd end up shipped out to a different facility. It's a privilege to be there. They appreciate it." 

Kerik said he does "400 to 600 push-ups every few days and lots of walking and running" on Cumberland's fenced-in grass and gravel track. "The entire site when it was purchased was a Pittsburgh Paned Glass factory," Darryl said. "There were pieces of glass everywhere. It's in the soil."

Kerik generally works out with a 33-year-old fellow white-collar convict from D.C., but he doesn't have many friends inside. "Not too many," he said. "About 10 guys a day come up to me for advice." Most he doesn't entertain, but he said he helped one inmate get his conviction vacated due to one of the lawyer's overlooked conflict of interest.  

"His uniform is clean and always pressed, his shoes are always shined," Mr. Picciano said. "That has come full circle."

Darryl said he had "casual conversations" with Kerik on the premises. "Bernie had some very intense stories about 9/11, which I was interested to hear. It was a different point of view from what we heard from all the news agencies. He didn't talk about why he was [in prison], nor was I interested in hearing it."

As has been reported, with digital help from his supporters Kerik has tweeted and blogged from prison, though not lately, about various conservative talking points, such as Park 51, the so-called ground zero mosque. 

He still has famous friends. His revolving list of visitors is extensive, though only 10 names at a time can be activated. Congressman Peter King has visited him, as has Geraldo Rivera. Mr. Giuliani has not been in touch for years, a matter of quiet pain for Kerik.

"There were rumors that Bernie was going to get the fabulous four together," Darryl said. "Arnold, Bruce Willis and Sly Stallone were his drinking buddies and were all going to visit on the same day. It was a fun rumor to have go around and watch the staff go absolutely crazy."   

Sydney Schwartzbaum, who in his role as president of the Assistant Deputy Wardens Union in New York City often clashed with Kerik in the past, said that Kerik certainly "took a proactive role" in dealing with problematic inmates, but that in general he was "not condescending, not maniacal, not sadistic toward the inmates. If he was, I'd like to say that, you know, because I didn't like the guy." 

Though in Mr. Schwartzbaum's opinion, Kerik "had larceny in his heart," he thinks he "should have gotten 27 months." He didn't explain this take on justice.  

The psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who conducted the legendary Stanford Prison Experiment in the 1970s and in his book The Lucifer Effect examined the case of Chip Frederick, the former corrections officer-turned-Abu Ghraib abuser, said that for Kerik, it might be "very difficult to see himself as an inmate." Mr. Zimbardo found Kerik's case "not unlike Chip Frederick, only more so since Chip was comparatively low-level in that corrections system whereas Bernie was the Man in his system. Essentially, he's in a very difficult position."

In interviews, Kerik spoke with a discernible compassion for the other inmates, commenting quietly on their individual stories and struggles as they filed into the visiting room. 

In an email, he wrote, "The men around me have been convicted of either a nonviolent drug offense or a white-collar crime. They have children and families. The system seems to demean and demoralize them, drains them financially, destroys their families and deteriorates their bond with their children. I never saw or understood this on the outside. Unless you're completely heartless, you have to have some compassion for them, if not for their families and children."

Aside from the boredom of prison life, missing his daughters, Celine, 11, and Angelina, 8, has been the worst of it, Kerik said. "There's been nothing more painful for me than being taken away from my two little girls. For any man as close to their kids as I am, this is your greatest punishment."

His wife and daughters visit him "at least once a month, sometimes twice," he said. "It's close to six hours each way, so it's a rough ride for the kids." They send him handwritten notes. He also speaks to them daily by phone or email. There is no Internet access at Cumberland, only an email system the inmates can use between 6 a.m. and 8:30 p.m., for 5 cents a minute. Like all inmates, Kerik is allowed up to 300 minutes a month on the phone. 

No longer on kitchen duty, he's been teaching what he calls a "life lessons" class for one hour every Tuesday evening, in which he tries to impart to his fellow inmates words of wisdom "based around my life experiences, good and bad, right and wrong, successes and failures." After a recent class, Kerik said, a convicted drug dealer from Baltimore serving nine years came up to him and said, "If I had someone like you talk to me about this stuff on the outside, I'd never be in here."  

Some inmates wear earplugs to sleep at night. Kerik often reads or writes until midnight or 1 a.m. "I've read more since I've been here than I have in the past 20 years," he said. The most memorable books for him have been The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch; Night, by Elie Wiesel; George W. Bush's Decision Points; and Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father.

As he was when he ran the city's Department of Correction, and his TEAMs management system pacified Rikers and was a finalist for Harvard's Innovations in American Government award, Kerik is still preoccupied with fixing the prison system.

"I vacated more than a hundred federal consent decrees, creating one of the most efficient and secure correctional systems in the United States, so naturally I constantly look at this system for ways they could better comply with minimum standards, maximize their efficiencies and reduce costs for the American taxpayer," he said. 

"For the most part, I have very little interaction with the staff," he said, but asserted that anyone who knew his background could guess that he has a "great amount of respect and admiration for the men and women that work in this field. I know the frustrations and dangers of their job."  

To his own shock, he's found himself agreeing with the likes of The New York Times, CNN and Justice Anthony Kennedy on matters of crime and punishment. "It's shocking for me," Mr. Picciano said, laughing. "I know him for 16 years. I'm thinking, 'What's he talking about, he's losing his mind.'" 

Kerik was moved when he recently read a speech Justice Kennedy gave in front of the American Bar Association in 2003, which a friend had emailed to him. Among the lines that struck him most was this: "As a profession, and as a people, we should know what happens when the prisoner is taken away." The majority of the inmates around him deserve a chance to get out and make something of their lives, Kerik said, instead of wasting away in prison. 

Of course, this includes him. With time off for good behavior, Kerik is looking at a release date in the fall of 2013. 

"I have learned so much on the inside that I just couldn't see or realize from the outside," he wrote
in an email. "We can't be soft on crime, and people must pay for the mistakes they make, but the overreliance on incarceration for punishment can often destroy a man who could otherwise pay for his mistake and return to society as a more productive and better person. In many cases, our system of criminal justice today is preventing that from happening. For more than two decades, some of the brightest legal minds in this country have called for a revision of the federal sentencing guidelines and a repeal of the mandatory minimums. Now, I think I know why."

editorial@observer.com

Prisoners are going on Facebook, playing FarmVille and tweeting using pseudonyms. The gangleader of the New York Bloods just got thrown into solitary confinement for self-promoting on YouTube, MySpace and Twitter.

But the prisoners are also organizing strikes, managing criminal enterprises, taking out hits and ordering seafood and cigars. Yep. Just like The Wire. Except now phones can access the Internet, and that makes things complicated.

"A smartphone hidden under a mattress is the modern-day file inside a cake," reports The New York Times in a story about how prisoners are using smartphones.

Smartphones are smuggled in by visitors and guards, stuffed inside footballs or shot over the jailyard fence from a potato cannon.

So many prisoners use smartphones that it's actually an excellent business opportunity, the publisher of iPhone Life told the Times.

"People outside of prison become addicted to their phones," Hal Goldstein said. "Can you imagine if you had nothing but time on your hands?" Yes, yes we can. It would involve smoking cigars and playing endless hours of Mafia Wars.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries