

Conrad Black: My prison education - cubix
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/31/conrad-black-my-prison-education/

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yoseph
A couple great quotes:

"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."

I'm honestly surprised (& 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.

"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."

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).

In summary, I love that Conrad Black wrote this article. Most in his position
wouldn't have.

~~~
mynameishere
It's all banalities. Standard lefty talking points. And of course, it's a lie.
"100 to 1"?

[http://politics.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2007/10/01...](http://politics.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2007/10/01/crack-
vs-powder-cocaine-a-gulf-in-penalties.html)

 _In 2006, crack cocaine sentences were 43.5 percent longer than powder
cocaine sentences; the average length of imprisonment for powder cocaine
offenders was 84.7 months, while crack cocaine-related imprisonments averaged
121.5 months._

~~~
neilk
Conrad Black would be amused at your description of him as a lefty. This guy
founded a newspaper specifically to combat what he called "soft, left pap" in
the Canadian journalism scene. He and his wife are so retrograde they are open
admirers of the monarchy and nostalgic for the British class system.

There is a disease in American politics of attacking the position for
potentially being consonant with a particular ideology. Call it the _ad
ideologicem_ fallacy.

Like, if this statement _could_ be said by a left-winger, it must not be true,
even if it's made by someone with actual experience or data.

Maybe his 100 to 1 statement is factually wrong, or perhaps that was just
hyperbole. The main issue is that there's any disparity at all between drug
sentences.

------
helmut_hed
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...".

Notwithstanding his personal shortcomings, he's right about sentencing and the
public defender system. Not that he has to worry about that!

~~~
todayiamme
You know I got the other sense from this article. He doesn't want to show
remorse because he wants to appear strong; a resilient rock against the
ravages of other mere mortals. Yet, he knows that he did something wrong. He
saw the pain and suffering of others up close and personal at a huge stretch
of time for 2 years, and this is his way of dealing with guilt.

Somewhere in his mind he sincerely believes that by speaking on the behalf of
these people he is making a form of penance.

I feel sad for him.

------
mcantelon
"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."

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.

~~~
cpr
Evidence, please?

~~~
neilk
There are a number of citations in the references to the Wikipedia article:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Conrad_Black>

------
pmichaud
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.

------
p2ph
"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."

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.

[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."

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.

Need less to say, he is big fry getting away with crime. Context is
everything.

~~~
MaysonL
An interesting blog to follow, by a white collar criminal, is White Collar
Fraud: <http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com/>

------
jasonkester
I hate to say it, since this guy clearly must have suffered a lot, but this is
just not a very well written article.

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.

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.

Really disappointing. I want my ten minutes back.

~~~
gruseom
Black founded the _National Post_ and his trial was extensively covered in
Canada (and even in the US). He's quite right to presume that his audience
know who he is and (roughly) why he was in prison. As for how the article's
written, your objection is really to the headline, which is scoped somewhat
inaccurately. The article itself is written fine. (And I would have said one
of its main points is that he _didn't_ really suffer a lot.)

It's interesting that this prominent arch-conservative is, through personal
experience, now citing facts and making arguments that are unfortunately
nearly exclusively those of the left. It's like the old line, "a conservative
is a liberal who has been mugged", in reverse. I wonder if he will do anything
about it in the future.

~~~
jasonkester
Why should the reader of a newspaper (or is it a magazine?) be expected to
know who founded it?

I hadn't realized that this was a newspaper article, but if so that actually
makes it worse. A journalist should know how to write in such a way that
people don't require external context to process a story.

~~~
JimmyL
It should more be considered as an opinion/ccolumn, as opposed to a news story
(you'll notice it's in the 'Full Comment' section of the paper). It's also not
a one-off piece; since he's been in jail, Conrad Black has continued to write
these columns for (what was formerly) his paper about life in prison, what
he's been up to, and general news issues of the day.

In short, this shouldn't be considered (and wasn't intended) as a news report
on life in prison, but rather one person's account of what life was like for
them.

