Convicted of wire fraud and tax evasion, the client had been sentenced to 10 months in federal prison. He had only ever spent a few hours in jail.

That was why he had paid hundreds of dollars and come here, to a noisy food court in an East County shopping center, for advice from Dr. Prison.

Dr. Prison is a consulting business, based in La Mesa and run by a San Diego man, that coaches men and women who are about to serve sentences in jail or prison. Dr. Prison teaches them how to talk, how to carry themselves, how to make allies and how to avoid making enemies. Really, how to survive.

“Dr. Prison's mission is to help you avoid being physically hurt, extorted, or possibly killed in prison,” the business says on its Web site, www.drprison.com.

“Just because you didn't know you shouldn't walk into another person's open cell because you didn't ask permission doesn't mean you should get the crap beaten out of you,” said Steve Scholl, who started Dr. Prison about two years ago.

Scholl has never been to prison, but he works with 10 on-call ex-convicts. He carefully selects the right ones to match the client's background and crime. Each client – he sees about two a month – is charged a fee based on the amount of time and attention they need.

“They will always have directly across the table from them someone who has served time,” Scholl said.

Advice for families

Dr. Prison also works with families of convicts, advising them how to best support their loved ones as they deal with the sentence from their side of the bars. This month, Scholl and his consultants will start hosting a national, online radio talk show Saturday nights on www.wsRadio.com. Listeners can call in for advice.

Scholl and his consultants usually meet their clients in a public place, the noisier and busier, the better. They want the client to be distracted, agitated. They want to mimic the stressful environment in prison, to tease out any weaknesses that might attract unwanted attention.

Clients contact Dr. Prison on the advice of their lawyers or bail bondsmen.

“They're generally middle-class people, people like you and me, people with $400 in their pocket,” Scholl said.

They aren't gang members, and certainly aren't people who have been in prison before.

Dr. Prison's Survival Tips Stay with your race. Don't lie. Don't volunteer too much personal information. Don't join a gang. Don't snitch. Let people come to you. Ask permission before you enter someone's cell.

“We are trying to help the person who probably is most vulnerable,” Scholl said.

A few years ago, Scholl was talking with a friend who had been released from prison.

“He was telling me stories about how things work in there, what you should and shouldn't do. I thought: this is valuable information,” Scholl said.

“It's a pretty fearful thing to think, 'My gosh, I'm going to go to prison.' Most of the stories you hear, they're true. And I thought, I'd pay someone to clue me in.”

Aura of science

The numbers are hardly scientific.

“He plants the fear in people, if they didn't already have it, that something terrible is going to happen to them in prison,” said Paul Sutton, a professor of criminal justice at San Diego State University.

The percentages give the aura of science, Sutton said. But they're nonsense.

“The advice isn't necessarily nonsense,” Sutton said.

Although Dr. Prison may be preying on people's fears, and implying that the politics of maximum-security prisons apply to all levels of facilities, Sutton said the business does provide some sound advice.

“This kind of information, or at least useful survival information, needs to get to people somehow, and the prisons don't provide it,” Sutton said.

Upon entering prison, inmates are given a handbook that lays out the rules and punishments for infractions.

“It's important stuff, but it doesn't tell you how to survive or tell you how to get along,” Sutton said.

He recalled a visit with his students to a state prison, where the guards stopped in the yard and told the group how each public phone belonged to a certain race, and using the wrong phone would result in a beating from other inmates.

Sutton asked the guard whether they shared that tip with new inmates. The guard said no. It was up to the inmates to learn for themselves.

Scholl's goal is to give his clients a head start.

Recently, when he met with the client going to federal prison, he called in his consultant Tom, who served nearly two years for drug convictions.

Tom, in his beanie and sunglasses and gray Vandyke beard, frowned and stared at the client. Tom, an addiction counselor, asked that his last name not be used. The client's name was not given because he feared for his safety in prison. Scholl, in a Hawaiian shirt, read from an assessment questionnaire.

“I hate the cliché, but it's a good cop, bad cop thing,” Scholl said before the meeting.

Be straightforward

The men stared at their client. Wouldn't let the matter drop.

“Any inconsistencies, any hesitating, means something to a greater degree,” Scholl told him later.

Rather than blurting out something that isn't true, take a moment and think. Then answer truthfully, Scholl said. But don't give too much detail.

“Specific things are better than nothing because nothing means you're hiding things,” Scholl said. “Be more straightforward. Answer in straightforward generalities.”

Later, they were reassuring. Tom encouraged the client to stick with his drug addiction recovery, and to make plans for his release.

“I think you will do well and one of the reasons is because you're a smart guy,” Scholl told him.

“I thought you guys hated me,” the client said. No, the men said. They were just trying to help him.

After the client shook their hands, thanked them and walked off, Tom pulled off his beanie and removed his sunglasses.

He had gray, receding hair and a kind, gently lined face. Going to prison could be a positive experience, he said. Like it was for him.

“It changed my life.”

The San Diego Reader: Published on 1/4/07
Source: http://www.sdreader.com/php/cityshow.php?id=1534

Lockup 101
By Joe Deegan

'The first thing that came to my mind," remembers Tom Miller, "was to arm myself with a screwdriver. The Rodney King riots were taking place in Los Angeles, and the tension in the yard was incredible. Everybody seemed ready for a fight."

Miller, 52, is telling me about his 1992 stint at a prison firefighter training camp near Boulevard in East County. He went to the camp as part of an 18-month incarceration for selling illegal drugs. A job assignment in the tool shop gave Miller easy access to the weapon he suddenly counted on to protect him. He did not have to use the screwdriver that day, but other prisoners were now on notice.

I ask Miller whether inmates back then ever wanted him to get weapons from the shop for them. "All the time," he says, "and my answer was always the same. 'No.' It was the same answer I gave to guys who offered me booze or drugs."

While on bail before entering prison, Miller joined a 12-step recovery program where he met an ex-con he credits with teaching him how to act in prison. "I was very scared of going to jail," says Miller. He is grateful that the man, who became his first recovery-group sponsor, also spoke to his mom, who was worried what would befall him in jail. "The guy told her, 'I can't say your son will or won't get hurt in jail, but one thing is certain, that if he keeps drinking and using, that's going to be a problem in there.' And the talk gave her a lot of comfort," says Miller.

Miller kept up his recovery program in prison and continued it after getting out. He obtained an associate of arts degree in substance-abuse counseling from San Diego City College. At the same time, he worked with a therapist, first as a client and later as a trainee. "The man became my mentor," says Miller, who for the past 12 years has been counseling people either going to prison or getting out -- and their families.

In the meantime, a company called DrPrison.com appeared in San Diego. Its purpose was to prepare people to survive prison stays, to avoid being killed, beaten, raped, or robbed. It was founded two years ago by management consultant Steve Scholl, who had spent most of his career troubleshooting for large construction project-management companies.

How, you ask, does a management consultant end up counseling soon-to-be inmates in the art of surviving prison? "What piqued my interest," Scholl tells me, "was a series of conversations I had with an old friend who just finished 15 years of doing time. I talked with him at length about his experiences in prison. It fascinated me. And even though I had no prospect of going to prison, imagining what it's like scared the heck out of me. My feelings were probably like a lot of peoples', especially people who are drawn to television shows like Prison Break and documentaries that show various aspects of prison life. And if the number of these shows is any indication, there are many folks out there who have a fascination with what goes on in prison."

As his friend explained the tactics he used for coping with prison life, Scholl had a moment of recognition. Many of the tactics were the same ones he was used to sharing in management consulting. On the basis of these recommendations, Scholl wrote a 30-page manual on how to deal with prison life. And his friend worked as his partner in getting DrPrison off the ground.

I remark to Scholl that comparing business and prison tactics seems entirely fitting. He gives me a polite nod and then acknowledges that Martha Stewart paid for services much like the kind his company offers before she went to prison. We agree that if Jeffrey Skilling, in his business life, had made use of DrPrison's insights, he might not now need them for life behind bars.

The original DrPrison partners eventually went their own ways. But this summer Scholl met Tom Miller. On the basis of Miller's 12 years of prisoner counseling and Scholl's experience with 22 clients so far, the two have decided to expand DrPrison. To date, the company has worked only with people heading for prison. Now it intends to continue helping prisoners while they are incarcerated and when they get out, including arranging anger management and parenting classes and assisting with parole requirements. And it is offering services to prisoners' families. To customize service, it will outsource consultations according to gender, race, and other factors. Miller and Scholl are currently spreading the word about DrPrison through bail bondsmen, defense attorneys, and therapists.

There is an objection to DrPrison that some people are sure to make. I run it by a small donut-shop coffee group one morning. Why should anyone, I ask, want to make prisoners' lives easier? Aren't they being jailed to suffer for their crimes?

A woman observes something about prisoners not all being the same. Lester Mathis then offers a tale. By his own acknowledgement, Mathis is a "tough guy" and has gone through some hard times. But he says several years ago police arrested him for failing to show up in court to face a misdemeanor charge. "Somehow they accidentally put me on the fourth floor at county jail, which is where they process all the felony people. I was only there a short time, but one day I accidentally threw this great big guy's lunch away. He saw what I did and started giving me hell about it. I apologized and, since I still had my own lunch, I gave it to him. And that settled things down. But those felony guys are a different sort. They've got nothing to lose, and they don't care what they do to you, especially if someone shows weakness. They'll punk somebody and then start trading him around to their friends," says Mathis.

In other words, although prisons and jails do house hard-core sociopaths, far less dangerous people pass through too. Tom Miller tells me that the first seven days on the inside are the most dangerous because the jailers haven't yet segregated inmates according to their crimes. "Fairly mild-mannered people will be thrown together with murderers, who later will be separated from the others," he says. And he argues that helping all prisoners is justified. "If any of them learn how to take care of themselves in prison," he says, "they are bettering themselves. Once people get a taste for improving their lives, they want more of it." And that's why Miller and Scholl believe that what they teach will help their clients not only in prison but beyond.

So I ask, "What do you teach?"

They have a seven-step program, they say, which they consider a trade secret for business reasons. But, in summary, it's something like this. In prison you constantly face inescapable situations, serious or trivial, that other inmates force upon you. For instance, someone might steal your shoes and you end up walking around barefoot all the time. "You can't call the cops," says Miller, "and you can't leave." Isolating can work for a while in some situations. "But other prisoners will not permit loners for long and will force confrontations in the yard, where everybody eventually has to go. They want to see how you'll act."

Scholl tells me that in their first consultations with clients, he and Miller try to discover "emotional vulnerabilities." "When you first walk into the yard," he says, "the other prisoners will be looking for them. Are you a hothead? A controller? A pleaser?"

So DrPrison tries to alert clients to the emotional signals they are likely to give off. "We find them by pushing their buttons in the consultation. Then suddenly, when we've hit the right one, they will react strongly." And the idea is not to stop reacting in that way entirely, but to control your style, use other styles, and vary them according to the situation. "Even the strongest and most controlling prisoner," observes Miller, "cannot get away with threatening behavior all the time. Five other prisoners will easily take him down."

The three main coping styles in prison, according to Miller, are the Controller, the Pleaser, and the Loner. Each is effective for protecting yourself sometimes, but never as an exclusive strategy. Doing something for somebody, such as acquiring money or stores from home, will become expected, and you may have to say no in a forceful way. It's the varying of styles that will save you.

"Sometimes you may have to fight," says Scholl, "but winning the fight is not crucial. Even if you get beat up, you are likely to land a few good blows. And the willingness to stand up is what gains respect."

The work with prisoners' families is likely to take up a big percentage of DrPrison's time in the future. That's because one of the greatest fears many people have who go to prison concerns what will happen to their relationships while they're gone.

Miller tells me of a woman who wrote a first letter to her son in jail. "It read, 'How dare you disappoint the family?' It berated him something terrible. I told her, 'Not good. All this is going to do is bring about resistance. You're not an agent of change here by doing this.' She had no idea. She thought she was going to make him feel bad so he'd have a change of heart. That's not what was happening. I told her he's only going to say something to please you because he needs you. So she finally called me last week to read me a new letter. She wrote, 'I know when you get out there will be a lot of blocks to your getting ahead in society. But you told me once you have an interest in photography.' And she sent him a magazine on photography."

Connecticut Post: 11/29/06, 4:45 AM EST
Source: http://www.connpost.com/fastsearchresults/ci_4738231

Violence unlikely for setup for Ganim, Newton

By Charles Walsh

Sources knowledgeable about prison life say ex-Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim and former state Sen. Ernest E. Newton II enjoy relative security at a minimum-security federal prison camp in Fort Dix, N.J.

And unlike Giordano, convicted in 2003 on charges involving sexual abuse of children, their corruption-related crimes are unlikely to provoke fellow prisoners to target them.

Child-sex offenders like Giordano become targets even if they're kept away from other prisoners, in a unit with others convicted of sex crimes, says Steve Scholl of DrPrison.com, a Web site dedicated to helping new prisoners survive.

"There is a stratification in the segregated unit. People charged with rape and other sex crimes will attack child sex predators," Scholl wrote.

Giordano was attacked Saturday by an inmate armed with a battery-filled sock at Connecticut's Garner Correctional Institute in Newtown. The attacker was serving time in the high-security facility for sex-assault charges. State prison officials said Giordano required no medical treatment.

According to state statistics, the attack was far from an isolated incident.

In 2006, there have been 450 incidents of inmate-to-inmate violence in Connecticut's 18 prisons, said Brian Garnett, spokesman for the state Department of Correction. He stressed that the number of attacks has fallen 69 percent since 1994 among the state's 19,000 inmates. A reportable incident of violence can range from a simple shove to a fatal stabbing, Garnet said.

"Overall, I think Connecticut's prisons are safe, secure and orderly," Garnett said.

There have also been 208 incidents of inmates attacking prison staff this year. Only one of those cases was considered serious, Garnet said. Although state correctional officials gave no reason for the attack on Giordano, even a minor infraction of the unwritten code of inmate behavior can bring a violent reply.

One Web site devoted to advising prison-bound convicts says that merely looking into another's prisoner's cell while passing by is a violation of the code, and grounds for an assault or long-term extortion.

Ganim and Newton are both serving out federal sentences at Fort Dix. Ganim is in his third year of a nine-year corruption sentence. In April, Newton started serving a five-year term for accepting bribes.

Another prominent former Bridgeporter who served nearly a year in a minimum-security federal prison camp in Otisville, N.Y., said there's less violence in a federal camp where inmates have privileges that can be taken away as punishment. In a 2004 article for Connecticut Magazine, former Ganim aide Leonard Grimaldi said those camps are a world away from the high-security facilities where many hardened prisoners do time.

"In a high security facility, a guy doing 30 years for carving out someone's heart could care less about cracking open a guy's head with a can of tuna in a sock," wrote Grimaldi, who declined to comment for this article.

A source who keeps in touch with Newton said that he has reported no problems with violence by other inmates at Fort Dix. Ganim, who has been described as a model prisoner, is not known to have scuffled with fellow inmates.

Traci Billingsley, spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Prisons, said the bureau has strict policy guidelines on what is and is not considered acceptable behavior by inmates. She said even if an attack should occur in a federal prison, there is no guarantee it will be made public.

"It's a matter of the inmate's privacy rights," Billingsley said. "We would only release information on an incident of violence if the prisoner who was attacked requested it."

In 2003, a federal jury convicted Giordano of violating the civil rights two girls, aged 8 and 10, by repeatedly sexually abusing them. He is appealing that conviction.

He is being held in state prison, rather than a federal facility, because state charges of 18 counts of sexual assault are still pending against him.

La Prenza: Volume XXIX Number 28 July 15, 2005
Source: http://laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/july15-05/050715.html

FrontPage Stories

While being imprisoned for drug distribution and consumption, James witnessed stabbings, riots and even a dozen murders while doing time. He saw people come and go, but the unwritten prison rules stayed intact throughout time and locations. He learned to never owe any favors or money to inmates, for it is the number one cause of death in prisons. Strength in numbers means survival and even if a matter doesn’t concern one directly, one must act or risk being attacked later on for lacking ‘heart’. On the lighter side, food in jail is lousy, treats such as sodas come sparingly, jobs pay pennies on the hour and prison ministers are always there to help.

“Our goal is to help them [prisoners] from being injured, extorted or killed in prison”, says Scholl. “In prison you can’t make the same assumptions you make in the real world. Using humor, sarcasm or even typical social interactions can cause some serious trouble. You can’t take a candy bar and think you’ll pay the guy later…you might get killed.”

Extortion in prison is a huge powerhouse. Inmates are allowed to have a credit line account that enables them to buy anything from television sets to Raman Noodle Soup through a catalog. A point system, which is where their paycheck goes to, is used for such purchases. Family members and friends can also contribute by donating money to their relative’s credit line. It is to be expected then, that items are sold at such high prices internally.

“You can get anything in prison. Anything,” says James. “Some of the best drugs I bought were in prison. But a joint that would cost me a few bucks on the street would be worth $60 in jail.”

It is a well-known fact that danger, violence and isolation are prison factors. Hence, begging the question, is a business like Dr. Prison really needed? Does one need to be reminded to keep to oneself and not take things that don’t belong to one in prison? The owners acknowledge that consulting companies such as Dr. Prison are a type of luxury that not too many delinquents think of. A legal attorney and bail bond manager come first in mind when someone is going to jail. Nonetheless, almost two-dozen inmates sought this service before Dr. Prison completed its first year in business. Prices for the consultation as well as other services range from $275 to $1200.

“About 30 percent of the material we give out, one could know intuitively,” says Scholl. “The other 70 percent are facts that can keep you out of trouble and alive.”

Perhaps what prompts people to use these consultation firms are the statistics on prison violence. According to Prison Policy Initiatives, a non profit based organization, inmates face a 10 to 15 percent chance of getting raped during their sentence, an 80 to 90 percent chance of getting beaten during their jail time and a 25 to 30 percent chance of getting killed.

Heightening the tension in prison is also impacted by race in gang affiliations and rivalries. As a general rule, during a riot or direct confrontation, hispanics and whites will team up against blacks. Anybody who doesn’t join in the fight will pay dearly for it later.

“Once you’re in jail, it doesn’t matter what gang you were in back on the streets, or who you had problems with,” says James. “You go directly to your racial group, and they will take you in. If there is a problem though, you better make sure you’re first in line to fight.”

Weapons are made in prison with seemingly inoffensive items. A sharpened toothbrush can prove to be harmful during a fight. A utensil can be an inmate’s worst enemy and anything that has the slightest possibility of having a pointed edge rapidly becomes a needed possession.

“Inmates run prison,” says James. “Guards are just there to baby sit, but prisoners control everything.”

So, does this business have a future in San Diego County where there are more than thirty thousand bookings every year? Two middle-aged men seem to thinks so, but just like in prison, inmates will control this factor.

After an hour and a half session, James sums up what he has lived through in more than ten state prisons.

“One can only run as far as the fences in the wall. So I think one needs to be prepared.”

For more information on Dr. Prison one can visit their web-page at www.drprison.com

The Star News: Vol. 124 No. 20  May 20, 2005
http://www.thestarnews.com/

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