Aide helps Martha Stewart prep for prison

By Ron Scherer and Sara B. Miller
The Christian Science Monitor

GETTY IMAGES Experts say Martha Stewart is unlikely to avoid jail time.

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"We'll want to make sure all goes as well as it can go," says her adviser, Herb Hoelter, who will have a seat in the federal court in Manhattan. "Or, I'll be there if anything goes sour."

Stewart's hire is not an anomaly these days. As white-collar criminals increasingly face jail terms, a group of consultants is helping them shift from life in the fast lane to life behind bars.

Some advisers focus solely on the sentencing, often persuading judges to hand down shorter and lighter penalties. Others are all-encompassing: part legal adviser, part psychiatrist and part friend, as they help defendants and their families prepare for the shock, humiliation and isolation that often accompany a prison sentence.

Those familiar with the business say the industry is in great demand from white-collar criminals, varying from child pornographers to CEOs accused of stealing corporate money.

"People with money retain them," says Malcolm Young, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group. He likens the trend to those able to pay for the best medical care. "They think it's effective."

Studies have shown that such advisers have had an effect in reducing sentences and finding alternatives to incarceration.

In Stewart's case, Hoelter has been involved with her proposal to do community service at the Women's Venture Fund, which teaches urban women entrepreneurial skills.

"From a community-service standpoint, there is not a better fit," says Hoelter, a co-founder and CEO of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives in Baltimore. "The judge could give a shorter period of time and community service or she could order community service instead of part of the time in jail."

But legal experts think it's likely Stewart will get at least some time in a federal prison for lying about a stock sale.

Kirby Behre, author of a book on federal sentencing guidelines, said the range for Stewart is 10 to 16 months. The judge may give half of that in home confinement or at a halfway house.
 
"At the end of the day, there is very little wriggle room to avoid at least five months in jail," says Behre, a partner at the Washington law firm Paul Hastings.

If Stewart does get jail time, Hoelter will be instrumental in trying to persuade the court to send her to a minimum-security facility near her Connecticut home. At a federal "camp," Stewart would live in a dorm and could get a job working outdoors.

"A white-collar criminal with no prior arrests, convicted of a nonviolent crime, scores out to a minimum facility," Hoelter says.

But it's not a given that a white-collar criminal will go to a federal prison camp. Lea Fastow, convicted of Enron-related crimes with her husband, former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow, entered a maximum-security facility this week because there was no room in a camp.

"She will spend most of her time locked down; it will be terrible," says Hoelter.

David Novak, a Salt Lake City consultant, helps white-collar criminals prepare for this shock.

A former prisoner turned sentencing consultant, he says many white-collar criminals are surprised to see so many drug dealers. "They are under the misconception that they are going to a country club that they'll serve their time with lawyers and doctors," he says.

Part of his job is to dispel those myths. "The biggest shock is that there is no such thing as a white-collar prison."

Many of Novak's clients, accustomed to leading thousands of employees and setting their own rules, often are surprised by the "absolute loss of control," he says, such as the autonomy to choose what to do or what to wear.

"I try to get them in a position where they recognize the more they do to help fellow inmates, the better or more worthwhile they'll feel," says Novak. "It's very easy for your mind and your heart and spirit to atrophy."

Not all white-collar criminals turn to consultants. Dunlap Cannon, a former lawyer in Tennessee who committed real-estate fraud, says he did his own research on life in prison before serving almost three years. He also sought advice from those who had spent time behind bars.

"But nothing really prepares you for that first day when you walk down with the guard who says, 'When you were a lawyer, you were a stupid lawyer,' " says Cannon. "For the first time you go in your jail cell and they close the door, the first time they put handcuffs on you. All those things are humbling."