Is Federal Prison Camp "Club Fed"?

      No.

     If there is a "Club Fed" out there, it wasn't where I went.  It wasn't where Martha Stewart went, either.  (She went to Alderson Federal Prison, in West Virginia.  I was at Coleman, near Leesburg, Florida.)

     The term, "Club Fed," may have been coined to foment anger in the public against prisoners who "deserve" to be punished and are, instead, the story goes, being treated to the high life.

     Prison is a ruthlessly punishing experience--even prison camp, the "best" of the prisons.  It's not "camp" at all.  It is an experience of constant surveillance, curtailment of most freedoms (except the freedom to think, as long as you keep your thoughts to yourself), temptation to rat on others if you think it might cut your time, and constant fear that you'll be caught in a fight or someone will do something that implicates you in a scheme (to get cell phones, perfume, drugs, cigarettes?  I don't know--) and gets you sent to "County," i.e., the county jail, where conditions are worse and you may be in solitary confinement, a.k.a. "the Shoe."  Prison is nothing but mind-numbing sameness.  The world closes in on you in prison.  Unbeknownst to you, your brain shuts down, a little bit more each day.  The walls within which you live are like a vise: they narrow your sensorium to such an extent that you forget most of the outside world.  Survival matters.  You are reduced to survivalism.  

     When I was released home after prison, I couldn't remember the names of my cats or dogs, I "forgot" how to turn on the oven, and I didn't recognize the contacts in my cellphone.  My sons thought I had developed dementia.

     It's true that in prison you get enough calories to sustain yourself.  There is air and water, and you have prison friends.  You can stay alive, strictly speaking. (The water, however, at Coleman, was contaminated by Legionella last winter, and many women became direly sick.)  I could walk outside on the track, get access to a piano most days for 30 minutes, and have books sent to me by my family.  If that was "Club Fed," then I suppose I was in Club Fed.