Conrad Black: My prison education

A couple great quotes:<p>"I had seen at close range the injustice of sentences one hundred times more severe for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine, a straight act of discrimination against African-Americans, that even the first black president and attorney general have only ameliorated with tepid support for a measure, still being debated, to reduce the disparity of sentence from 100 to one to 18 to one."<p>I'm honestly surprised (&#38; pleased) he would say that outright. I'm not particularly familiar with the workings of the U.S. justice system but a disparity of 100 to one sounds fairly unjust.<p>"America’s 2.4 million prisoners, and millions more awaiting trial or on supervised release, are an ostracized, voiceless legion of the walking dead; they are no one’s constituency."<p>This quote makes loads of sense when you consider that in the American justice system, prosecutors win over 90% of their cases (a point mentioned by Black).<p>In summary, I love that Conrad Black wrote this article. Most in his position wouldn't have.

I've followed this case over the years and it's completely in character to see that he has no remorse whatsoever. He had been draining funds from his company, Hollinger International, into his own pockets for years. Shareholder pressure forced an investigation by the board, upon which he resigned, and was subsequently convicted for securities fraud. And of course he now describes himself as one of the "people, who, like me, would never dream of committing a crime...".<p>Notwithstanding his personal shortcomings, he's right about sentencing and the public defender system. Not that he has to worry about that!

"Veterans of even 20 years in the federal prison system could not recall anyone being bailed in mid-sentence like this, and particularly not on the heels of unanimous Supreme and Circuit Appeals Court decisions."<p>The justice system evidently works in mysterious ways for rich, connected neoconservatives. Conrad Black's fraud was blatant, he hid and destroyed evidence of it, and has shown no remorse. After siphoning more than $6M of money from the company, he served a little over two years. $3M/year is a pretty good salary for living in minimum security prison.

It's not earth shattering, but it's an interesting look at the broken criminal system (can't call it a justice system...) from the type of guy who is rarely in a position to really see it.

"I have learned more of the fallibility of American justice, which does convict many people, who, like me, would never dream of committing a crime in a thousand years."<p>It is amazing the number of people who commit white collar crime [1] make the claim that they would not dream of committing crime. White collar crime is as inexcusable as any other.<p>[1] obstruction of justice and honest services fraud in this instance. As I understand it, the US supreme court ordered a review of the applicability of honest services fraud. From wikipedia Quote "The jailed former media baron's obstruction of justice conviction, for which he is serving a concurrent 6 ½ year sentence, remains in place."<p>Tho, the rest of the article is well written, I wonder if he considers himself to be small fry, since he states "A trillion dollars have been spent, a million easily replaceable small fry are in prison", tho not in the context of white collar crime.<p>Need less to say, he is big fry getting away with crime. Context is everything.

I hate to say it, since this guy clearly must have suffered a lot, but this is just not a very well written article.<p>At no point does he try to explain who he is or why he was in prison. You get the idea that he was falsely accused, and you learn (at excruciating length) that he's been released, but no details as to the how and why of either event.<p>Then, 1000 words in, just when he's ready to tell you some of the interesting things that happened to him in prison (hence the title of the article), it just ends.<p>Really disappointing. I want my ten minutes back.