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Book Review
June 2006, Page 50

Federal Prison Guidebook
By Howard O. Kieffer

Federal Prison Guidebook
By Alan Ellis & J. Michael Henderson
2005 - 576 pages
(including appendixes)
To Order: Call 415-460-1430

Reviewed by Howard O. Kieffer

Justice Brennan once described the plight of prisoners with these compelling words:
    Prisoners are persons whom most of us would rather not think about. Banished from everyday sight, they exist in a shadow world that only dimly enters our awareness. They are members of a ‘’total institution’‘ that controls their daily existence in a way that few of us can imagine. ‘[P]rison is a complex of physical arrangements and of measures, all wholly governmental, all wholly performed by agents of government, which determine the total existence of certain human beings (except perhaps in the realm of the spirit, and inevitably there as well) from sundown to sundown, sleeping, walking, speaking, silent, working, playing, viewing, eating, voiding, reading, alone, with others. . . .’‘ It is thus easy to think of prisoners as members of a separate netherworld, driven by its own demands, ordered by its own customs, ruled by those whose claim to power rests on raw necessity.”
      Justice William Brennan, dissenting in O’Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 354-55 (1987).
Alan Ellis and his co-author, J. Michael Henderson, each bring a unique perspective to this updated and expanded edition of the Federal Prison Guidebook. Ellis, a nationally recognized federal sentencing expert and NACDL Past-President is able to add both value and credibility to the publication by drawing upon Henderson’s depth of experience working for the Bureau of Prisons (BOP)for more than 23 years.

Most criminal defense lawyers, even the most experienced who are in the federal courts every day, are there to win their cases, the reality, however, is that most of these prosecutions end in guilty pleas or verdicts and proceed to sentencing where the key questions for most people are: “How much time am I going to get and where am I going to do it.”

The Federal Prison Guidebook provides much of the basic information needed to answer the “where” question. The Bureau of Prisons used to put out what they called a “Facilities Guide.” It was a prison by prison analysis, including photographs of most facilities, that ceased publication in1992.

Ellis first published his Federal Prison Guidebook in 1998 and took what they had done, and added a lot of information. In his 2000 edition, he expanded the volume to include practice tips, articles on how to get your client a favorable federal prison placement, and how to obtain early release. This time, an analysis of the BOP’s placement policies has been added, along with practice tips and articles on how to “do time,” the Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP) and some Booker articles previously published elsewhere. While the Booker articles and the majority of the practice tips make interesting reading from a sentencing perspective, they add little to the book’s primary mission.

Every client wants to be assigned to a minimum security facility (a federal prison camp). It used to be that if you had a whitecollar offender, and s/he were sentenced to a period of imprisonment, camp was pretty much a certainty. This is not necessarily the case any longer. There are now factors that will keep some of these clients out of a federal camp, at least as an initial designation. A simple example is whether or not s/he is in custody at sentencing. If the judge remands the client after the verdict or plea, and they are not going to be allowed to voluntarily surrender, that will negatively impact the chances of getting to a camp and the client could find themself at a low-level security prison, which has fences.

Ellis and Henderson never broach the existence of a “10 Best” as does the general press with their oft-mentioned references to the existence of “Club Fed” — and that is a good thing.

They provide more than enough information for practitioners to counsel their lucky clients on what to expect upon self surrender, but what is missing is any description about what those not so lucky go through, just to get to their designated facilities. The book fails to get across the BOP’s method of control and message to inmates that nothing should ever be taken for granted and change can always be expected. To use the inmate vernacular: “You ain’t got nothin’ coming.”

More than 80 percent of the Federal Prison Guidebook, fully 400 pages, is devoted to a prison by prison listing of facilities, broken up on a regional basis — including privately run prisons under contract. Most of this general information is easily accessible on the BOP’s own public Web site at www.bop.gov. Ellis’ book, however, gives context to the otherwise repetitive facility descriptions and is nicely enhanced with pertinent visiting information, including lodging listings. The authors are to be congratulated for their success in extracting valuable institution-specific programming — unique, even one-of-a-kind, educational, vocational, religious and recreational opportunities — from the BOP and other contacts. This information is all but unknown outside a very small circle and is crucial to the clients’ overall incarceration experience and, more than anything else, makes “doing time” somewhat bearable.

Make no mistake, the Federal Prison Guidebook is no Fodor’s guide, but then it’s not meant to be. There are no pictures, other than the authors’ — perhaps because the BOP refused to supply them. Nonetheless, this is one reference book that belongs in the library of every federal practitioner, including public defenders, U.S. district judge and U.S. probation officer. In fact, if you are in the business of criminal defense, you need to have a couple of extra copies around — just to loan to clients.

Howard O. Kieffer is Executive Director of Federal Defense Associates in Santa Ana, California.


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