Saturday, May 9, 2008
Ten Days Until My Release From Taft Federal Prison Camp
I’m looking forward to accessing my own computer. For far too long I’ve been burdening my mother with all of my typing obligations. It’s been a real chore for her, though she has responded admirably as my partner in all of these writing projects. One handicap of relying upon my mother, however, has been the issue of timeliness. As a prisoner, I do not have that privilege of rapid response. Instead, I must wait for hard copies and for prison staff to deliver the snail mail.
I received a copy of the post Larry Levine made to my blog. I’m surprised that he read the post and grateful for his advice. Of course, Mr. Levine might resist the urge of venturing unsolicited advice. That way he could spare himself the embarrassing reality of its true value.
In the post that Mr. Levine uses as an advertisement for his prison consultation service, he suggests that his failure to complete his term without a return to prison was not his fault. The truth as I have experienced it tells me a different story. As a man who fancies himself a prison consultant, it would seem to me that he should have been aware of the Bureau of Prisons disciplinary code. Although the code #408, of which he says he was convicted, is of the low-moderate severity, I would have expected a so-called expert to know better.
Mr. Levine goes on to write that he does not advise others on how to scam the system. But from what I’ve read of his work, his marketing ploy is a scam. He likes to say that he served time in high security. He should know that his time in administrative facilities, like the MDC LA or FTC Oklahoma, does not qualify as high security. As a man who likes to claim he knows the real BOP, he ought to know that he comes across as a charlatan when he makes such representations.
I will not seek advice from a man who cannot even keep himself out of prison. And although Mr. Levine diminishes the 18-month sentence I served, I would urge him to look at how I empowered myself while serving the term. One lesson I learned, as I expressed in my book, Lessons From Prison, was to live truthfully and emerge stronger. That is the message I intend to convey, and it appears to me that he did not learn during his 10-year sentence.
