We Sat Down W/ Someone Who Went To The Same Jail As Diddy & Luigi - The Truth About MDC Brooklyn

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A few months ago, a video starts going viral of a man named Michael who states that he was booked into the MDC Brooklyn facility and he was placed in the same unit as Luigi Mangioni.

Michael is like a young guy, I want to say in his 20s, and he very interestingly says in this now viral video that the COs, the correctional officers, they want to put you with your type of people.

So they immediately ask him when he's getting booked, like, what gang are you in?

They just like assume he's in a gang, which is very bold of them to assume.

But nevertheless, Michael is telling them, put me with the Italians.

And they're like, we don't have Italians, but we have a guy named Luigi.

So they're like, you're going to go with Luigi.

And he thought it was like a whole joke.

He thought he's going with like some random guy named Luigi who just happens to be Italian.

He was recently booked into Brooklyn, MDC.

So he knows about the Luigi Mangione case.

And so as he's getting booked, he realized he's going to be put in the same cell as Luigi Mangioni.

Now, this is his story from his perspective.

There's no way to like fact check or verify that any of this actually happened in the facility, but this is what he says happened.

He says that as he's going into the cell to put his stuff away, Luigi's just standing there.

Like he turns around, Luigi Mangioni is just standing there.

And he's just all very nice.

Like, hey, how are you?

Michael said that Luigi is very nice.

He introduces himself.

Michael shakes his hand and says, Yo, it's an honor to meet you.

And at this point, Michael's got another friend, another inmate that he's kind of known.

And he's standing right next to him.

And he's telling Michael, don't say no goofy shit like that ever again.

Don't be saying that in jail.

Like you can't get away with stuff like that.

But here's where it's fascinating.

Michael says he was asking Luigi if like, oh my god, like, are you being treated like a hero in here?

Because that's what people were saying outside.

They're like, oh, when Luigi goes to prison, at least he will be treated like a hero.

That's what a lot of his supporters were saying.

Or they hope that the inmates are treating him well.

They hope that he's maybe higher on the jail hierarchy.

And Luigi states that Michael is actually one of the very few people that even

well, Luigi allegedly states that Michael is one of the few people that even knew him coming into this unit.

So Michael is like, what are you talking about?

Everyone knows you.

Like your face is a model for Shein.

He didn't say that, but you get the vibe.

And

he's like, what do you mean?

So it is explained that MDC is kind of like a transition gel, meaning people are coming in and out for court hearings from other facilities and they have not been out in a very long time.

So these people, they haven't been keeping up with the news.

They haven't been free for a very long time.

So they don't really know what's happening.

Or these people are fighting their own federal cases and they don't really care about anything that's happening outside of their own federal case.

They don't have the capacity to care about anything else.

And so lots of people that support Luigi Mangioni have been just flooding Michael in the comments, asking him, how is he doing?

Is he working in jail?

Like, what does he spend his time doing?

And which he says that he spends most of his time, like he always just has like a giant stack of letters next to him.

And all day he's just responding to letters.

That's pretty much all he does.

And he's working in the jail.

So he cleans the showers every morning.

Michael was at MDC Brooklyn for a few days with Luigi before making bail.

And he said that he ate lunch pretty much every day with Luigi, apparently, and one of his other friends.

And quote, another white kid they called Charles Manson.

So I guess that was his nickname.

A lot of netizens.

When this video goes viral, their initial confusion was exactly what you expect from the internet.

Because Michael is young and one would would say conventionally attractive.

And so all of the comments are writing, is this the bad bitch cell block?

What's happening?

Other comments are saying MDC got a dating app we should be downloading or others are saying what is MDC?

Hot guy jail?

So,

you know,

people are saying it's two for two, but lest we forget, SBF, Diddy are also held at MDC.

So I don't know.

what you have to say about that.

But a lot of people were making a lot of jokes about this.

And I was so intrigued because a big topic of conversation surrounding luigi mangioni because there has not been many updates outside of his court hearings and outside of everything that's been going on legally of how he has been and i know that there are lots of people that are intrigued to understand what it's like in mdc and just to even understand and i always think it's important when people are interested in a topic to maybe even dive deep to even further explore that topic.

So like right now, if people are interested in MDC Brooklyn, it could also be a time for people to like suddenly dip their toes into, oh, maybe prison reform, like maybe talk about the prison system.

So it's very interesting.

And we reached out to Michael to see if we could get an interview with him because, you know, he said that he shared a cell with Luigi.

There's just like a lot going on.

I believe he is facing his own federal indictment right now.

So there's a lot that cannot be said.

I think that his Twitter was taken down.

I think there was like subsequent drama on Twitter.

There was just a lot happening and occurring.

And I did not go too deep into the rabbit hole, but I was also talking to this man named Brad.

And because Brad was also held at MDC Brooklyn for quite some time.

And the way that he was able to describe everything at MDC with such precision, but also so much interesting perspective, because he's not just coming from the perspective of like, fuck jail.

Like, I hate everything about jail, which honestly, I don't think would be incorrect from anyone who has experienced jail to say but he just had a lot of interesting stories and perspectives to share that i thought were if anything enlightening intriguing but also kind of refreshing in the sense of like i had not heard a lot of this prior and i did see a lot of people on luigi subreddits posting some articles that brad had been writing about mdc brooklyn and so we had reached out to brad and i was really excited because he's based in new york and we were going to be in new york for the luigi mangioni hearing for New York State Court.

And we had set up this interview.

And then

everything went a little crazy while we were in New York.

And the timing was just really hectic with interviewing Brad.

And

I'm laughing because it's just like the most ridiculous thing ever.

I almost had to cancel and I really did not want to cancel on Brad because I felt like everything that he would share would be so enlightening, not to just people who are intrigued by Luigi Mangione's case, but intrigued just in general about what happens in jail in MDC Brooklyn, which we've talked about non-stop because there's so many high-profile inmates.

And like five hours before, I was like, I asked my husband if he could just do the interview himself.

This man has never done an interview.

This man has only ever heard me yap to him.

He is not a yapper himself.

And

he went, he interviewed Brad, and he was like, I was nervous.

Everybody was nervous, but Brad just shared so many fascinating stories so that is going to be today's episode an interview with a former inmate at mdc brooklyn that my husband did but just a few things um brad was at mdc brooklyn way prior to luigi and so it's not like the timeline does not line up it's not like oh i saw luigi it's not like that um and there's just lots of different sections of mdc brooklyn and so everybody kind of has a different experience coming out of mdc brooklyn i think it's also personality based and who you're with when you're in MDC Brooklyn, which section you're in at MDC Brooklyn, what crimes have been committed.

So there's just a lot of different variables.

But I thought that this was one of the most fascinating MDC Brooklyn interviews that I had seen.

And I was like scouring the internet to see what was out there.

This interview is going to tell you.

how they have girlfriends that they like shout through the vents and like how they find lovers in jail, if you will, and what it means when a correctional officer will roll in a TV away from the cameras and start playing an x-rated video.

Like, it's just stuff that I haven't even seen on Reddit is going to be covered in this interview.

And I'm also going to leave all of Brad's links in the description.

So, with that being said, let's get started.

Tell us about your arrests and your first day at the MDC.

So, my first day at MDC Brooklyn was the day after Labor Day.

Federal agents came to my apartment.

I'd been using drugs.

My friends and I had been pooling our money, getting drugs over FedEx.

We'd broken the drug laws.

It was a conspiracy.

And a friend of mine wore a wire into my apartment.

Then, a couple hours later, federal agents came knocking at my door.

They burst through.

It was very dramatic.

And at that point, I'd been abusing drugs and active addiction.

Had been up for like almost three days at that point.

And I was running a fever because I had a pretty bad infection.

So I was very disoriented.

And they come through, they sort of take me down to my kitchen.

And the main guy

who is sort of in charge of me, and he's laughing, and he had a grip blast.

And he loved arresting people, I think.

And

a bunch of other guys come in and they start tearing through my apartment, you know, the drawers opening, furniture kind of tipping down, rooting around looking for illegal drugs, which I did have in my apartment.

And they were taking pictures.

So I was sort of down in my kitchen and I heard them in my bedroom.

And I heard the flashing,

I think they handcuffed me.

And then, when they had found enough drugs to

arrest me, they asked me to take off my shoelaces and they walked me down the stairs, down the stairs, out of my building, and handcuffs into my neighborhood.

Why did they ask you to take off your shoelaces?

Oh, well, you don't want any shoelaces or belts on somebody because you might do self-harm.

I think probably it's part of their policy because people use those sort of things to hurt themselves.

Oh, wow.

So I think that's just their policy.

How did they get into the apartment?

Well, they were banging, banging, banging, banging, bang, banging, saying police, police, police.

And I did open the door, which may have been a mistake because later they said that I invited them in, which I didn't.

But I think technically I invited them in because I did comply and opened the door when they knocked.

So they throw you in the car?

Well, they put me in the car.

I wouldn't say throw.

I mean, they were, I mean, once I had basically submitted, they were mostly

behaved.

They were professional.

I'll say they were both professional.

Then we went to St.

Vincent's Hospital.

We had sort of like a medical evaluation because I looked terrible.

I'd been up for a while.

And they take me to the

waiting room and they're like, D E, D E.

And actually, one of my bosses' old friends like stood up and staring at me as I walked by.

So it was a pretty like, it was pretty grim.

I was pretty shocked by that point.

I was definitely in shock.

They take me there.

Doctor sort of signed off that I was healthy enough to be incarcerated.

And then they took me to the courthouse and I waited in the bullpen at 500 Pearl Street, had an arraignment, took me out.

I mean, it's getting to be a blur.

Then they shackled me hands and feet with a bunch of the other guys at the end of the day, end of the business day, when the court business was over, and they took all of us out to MDC Brooklyn.

So I was shackled hands and feet, then hooked to the chains of the other guys, and we sort of shuffled out into the van to go from

Lower Manhattan out to Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where the federal detention facility, the MDC Brooklyn, is.

And at this point, I was really in bad shape.

You know, I'm starting to go through withdrawals because I was pretty hooked on, I would say, the most serious things I was hooked to was methamphetamine and benzodiazepines.

And I had, of course, been up for a few days.

I was running a fever.

I was really in bad shape.

So I'm very disoriented.

And they process you.

There's a strip search.

So you take off all your clothes.

Some stuff they'll put in a box and like ship it back to you.

I think they just threw my stuff away.

Given a prison uniform, strip search, pictures taken.

You're questioned at one point, just sort of a basic intake.

Now, I'm totally disoriented.

You know, I was not really processing processing what was happening.

I was in shock.

I was ill.

I was overwhelmed.

And I, you know, basically complied.

I'm compliant by nature, a rule follower by nature, even though I got myself in this situation.

So it was rough.

I will say my first four days at NDC Brooklyn was rough.

After I was put into the uniform, long walk around the facility up to the medical intake unit in the new building.

And it's a double-tier unit where it's people just fresh to the building where you get a chest x-ray, you get your teeth checked, you get TB tests, basic rudimentary medical intake to make sure that you're safe to be put into general population.

So I basically waited.

going back and forth to the courthouse every day for like, it was about three or four days until I was bailed out.

And in those three or four days, every morning, woke up at the beginning of the morning, taken down to the intake area, changed clothes, shackled up, put on the van, taken the courthouse, wait all day, hoping and praying my bail would come through, and then turned around and back.

And then that happened three or four times as I get sicker and sicker and sicker.

And I'm asking, please, can I see a doctor?

And it just.

wasn't possible in the routine, in the intake, but I survived.

I eventually did get bailed out.

So, I read that you were in just a giant room with 120 inmates.

Is that the same setting for this time?

So, after I was bailed out, nine months later, I went back into the jail.

I surrendered again, just in the course of the legal process.

First time around, all four of those days, I was in the medical intake unit.

And that was still a 120-man unit, but that was in the new building that had two tiers of cells.

And I stayed back in that unit for another 11 days the second time I went in.

But the chunk of my time was in the dorm unit, which is a single open space.

I think it was about, you know, 100 by 60 or 100 by 30, I forget.

And 120 bunks, double bunks, one row after the other, in a single room, no windows, little slits for outside light, but basically warehoused people.

That's your second time, nine months later.

Yeah.

You walk into this room.

Yeah.

That's where you're seeing, it's different from the first time.

Yeah, I walk in and I just see this single room and it's just massive people.

And of course, it's very loud, hard floors, hard walls, men from all over the world.

And it's just this massive sound.

You know, everyone talking and yelling and all that, you know, big feeling and busyness.

And I couldn't believe that was it.

I thought thought maybe there'd be a cell or maybe there'd be something, but no, it was just that one room, a few toilet stalls,

four or five shower stalls with sort of stone walls top to the bottom,

the tables where people would eat, two laundry machines, a tiny kitchen area, a room for the corrections officer,

little kind of like

little subdivisions of the room, not doors, but one with a television and one that was used for basically religious activities, prayer, Bible study.

And so, yeah, so that was the room.

How many hours were you in that room per day?

I was in that single room basically 24-7 for a year.

And the lights doesn't shut off?

No, well,

not all.

They'll shut off a few of the lights over the bunks, but they don't turn off the lights to the full room for safety.

So these are fluorescent lights.

Yeah.

And you're sleeping in that light.

What was the first night there?

First night was very intense.

Again, I'm, you know, coming down off drugs.

And by that time, the second time I went in, between the two times, I got in a terrible concussion.

And so I'm coming down off the concussion, the drugs, my brain really not working well.

They assigned me a bunk, top bunk, center of the room, right under these fluorescent lights.

And that was that little tiny strip was my only bit of like turf in the world i had a little locker off to the side but that bunk under the fluorescence in the middle of that room sound coming up everywhere not a lot of english spoken in that mass of sound and just

melting down and

It was quite an adjustment.

It was a very intense experience.

Now, I will say, and I have to emphasize this: jail saved my life.

I was killing myself with drugs.

You know, I was put on this very difficult journey entirely because of my own choices.

And so,

I'd be dead had I not had that moment, but that moment was hard.

It was a big adjustment.

That first night,

I did hear

in the corner

a group of men singing in Spanish Bible songs, like Christian, like sort of summer camp Bible songs.

And I walked over to that circle.

It was about 20, maybe 25 men clapping, singing, just, you know, Christian summer Bible camp songs.

And I joined in.

And at the end of the singing, someone said a prayer and they asked me my name.

And I said my name out loud in jail for the first time.

After the prayer, the group of Christians went around and gave each other hugs.

And I thought, that's the most incredible thing in the world.

Here I am in this super intense room.

It's the worst moment of my life.

And yet there was humanity, there was kindness.

There were a lot of angels in that jail, both a few people who worked there and a few people there as inmates.

And they saved my life.

Wow.

Was that the first conversation you had inside with somebody?

I can tell you exactly.

There was, I walked in, and someone who I had met once in the city, in sort of like the drug land, he came up to me and we reconnected.

He was extremely helpful.

He sort of was able to point a few things out, you know, helped me sort of adjust.

Do you recall what he said in that moment?

He said,

I think I know you.

Uh-oh.

And it took me a while to process who he was.

And I was very lucky that he was there.

You know, you say he kind of helped you, showed you around.

Yeah.

What did he point out for someone new like you?

Look, I had one speeding ticket in high school.

And like, I didn't know anyone had ever been to jail.

And so, like, and for a lot of people, jail's just sort of a normal part of life and something that their, you know, their cousins are there.

There's their guys that have family members there.

There were people that just had a little bit more information before they walked in there.

I did not.

So he explained how laundry got done.

He sort of talked to me about the schedule for the day.

He explained the important rules.

He explained count time because they have to, look, the jail's main two things.

They can't lose you and they can't kill you.

So they have to like, you know, count you.

And they count you twice a day.

Actually, three times a day.

You go to your bunk.

Yeah, you go to your bunk.

At night, they'll come.

You can be laying down.

And in the morning, you can be laying down.

But once a day, there's a, no, twice a day.

Once or twice a day, there's a stand-up count where you have to show that you can stand up on your own feet so they know that you're alive.

And

throughout the whole federal system, they do these counts.

They send the count in, you know, I guess to Washington, D.C., make sure the numbers are right.

And that's just part of the daily rituals.

Now, did he mention any groups?

Like, okay, you want to stay away from that group or you don't want to say these things?

Any sort of conversations like that?

I will say on my unit, I was was very lucky.

I was on a unit where, generally speaking, the inmates were a little older and everyone was mixed and everyone was in the same room.

You couldn't escape.

If you had a conflict with someone, there was no escaping.

So, although, generally speaking, people ate with other members of their you know, ethnic or religious groups,

it wasn't,

I was lucky.

There wasn't a kind of rigid system of groups to avoid or not avoid.

For whatever reason, I

looked at on that unit where there was, since we were all in the same place, kind of social pressure for peace.

Is it better than the traditional sale blocks?

I don't know.

I mean, it was pretty stressful to be in that single room.

Because remember, in that single room, it's men who were there for all kinds of reasons.

Some who had done some serious stuff.

Some people who were there just like on a probation violation.

All kinds of people from all over the world, all continents.

Remember, it's New York City.

So a lot of people come to New York City for all kinds of reasons and to do all kinds of business.

And a lot of it contraband.

So it was a vast number of people.

And one guy could have just been sentenced to life.

And one guy might be getting out the next day.

Somebody's wife just left him.

Somebody's mother just turned them in.

You know, the emotions are big

around the clock.

Well, I would say, you know, in waking hours.

So that was a very stressful sensory environment.

It took me months afterwards just to adjust because of the sensory overload.

But in terms of what we discussed, the social pressure towards peace, I think, was very lucky for me.

So that room 24-7,

you never stepped out of that room.

Well, you could sign up and about 10 people a week could go to what they called the library, which was like you could leave the unit and go to this, you know, small space with

a certain selection of leisure reading, scholarly reading, and some law books.

And across the hall, across the hall, for a few hours a day, they opened this little concrete room

that was basically an empty space, low ceiling,

a very beat-up

basketball rim, a tiny little vent that went into the shaft of the building.

So you could go in that other room, and I did, sometimes just to sort of walk in circles or do push-ups.

That room, because some of the men had been in that room for many years, because people are at MDC, some are just passing through, and some stay there for years waiting for their trial to happen, waiting to testify in other cases.

Right in that little shaft, you could yell out through that little vent and talk to other prisoners on other floors.

And the thing that made me laugh the most was that men would have girlfriends

or wives, as they'd often call them.

And they'd have these appointments where they'd lie on the floor on their stomachs and yell out through the shaft and listen for their girlfriend or wife to talk back to them.

And they would have like appointments where they'd arrange shifts, like who could lay on the ground, yell through that shaft.

Now, it was definitely against the rules.

If a correction officer would come in and spot them laying on the ground talking to their wives, they'd jump up to their feet and act like nothing had happened.

And once a year, the prison would come through and take Polaroids.

And so the couples on different floors would mail their Polaroid to their girlfriend or spouse

in the other floor.

And And sometimes someone might have been talking to this woman, talking, frankly, talking dirty, which is most of the conversation, you know, and then they had never seen them.

You know, and then they'd cast Polaroid.

And

to put it nicely, it wasn't always what they imagined.

So what happens when they see the photo and they're disappointed?

Well, there's a moment of choice.

You know, do never talk to them again or you go down because you liked her voice or you liked her company?

Or at this point, you might feel real connection because you talk to her every day and you go and you say, you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

Or if the other men would see the picture.

I mean, it was, I have to say, look, it was very stressful and there's a lot of pain and anguish and it's incredibly difficult.

Sensorily, it's hard.

There are times where it's winter with no heat, summer with no air air conditioning, but life still happens.

You know, I read about this too, actually.

So I know this exists today.

And they're saying that where Diddy is staying, you know, they wouldn't be surprised that a lot of different inmates will try to get in contact with Diddy because, you know, he's famous and rich.

Now, allegedly, and by allegedly meaning it was in the New York Times,

that Diddy and I think Sandbank and Freed were in the unit that was one floor above mine.

You know, so in terms of like the setting, it's a fairly decent chance that the room I'm describing is similar to where Tristan is.

Yeah.

From our research, they're in North Four.

Right.

I was in three North.

Three North.

Yeah.

So I was in three North.

They're in Four North.

Yes.

Yes.

I was in three North.

Oh, yes.

Three North Five.

Now, in Four North,

they have about 30 to 40 high-profile inmates.

So from what you're describing, your room had 120 people and their room only had 30, 40 people.

That's why they're saying sometimes the top bunk is empty.

That makes sense.

My guess is, if I have to guess, and I'm guessing, that the

floor plan is the same and they just have much lower population in Four North right now.

Yeah.

I don't know if you ever watched Squid Game.

They had this giant dorm with all these bunk beds, like three bunks, four bunks, side by side.

How close are the bunks for you guys?

Very close.

Very close.

Can I reach you if I change?

Oh yeah.

Oh easily, easily, easily.

Like I'm sleeping my heads right there to the

very delightful Armenian friend who's behind me.

And

oh yeah, you're very close.

Oh, easily.

Your arm goes over.

You touch the next person.

Oh, yes.

Because you're very tight.

Very tight.

I don't recommend it.

I mean, I recommend it if you want your life saved.

I mean, if you're in a bad situation like I was, it saved my life.

And I got a lot of help there.

It was a huge experience living with those men from all over the world,

hearing stories from all over the world.

And in that room, you're there and you're each other's whole lives.

So lots of jokes, lots of stories.

Toilets.

Oh, yeah.

Toilets, uh-huh.

They're in the room.

Oh, yeah.

So they're basically stalls and there is a stall door you can close and there are some urinals and they're right near where the laundry machines are and where the tables are for eating.

So barely any privacy.

Right.

Well, there's a stall door

and there's a curtain for showers.

Everything's right there.

Yeah, everything's right there.

Yeah, yeah.

And people fight over the stalls.

I didn't see any fighting over the stalls.

I mean, one day a man died on the toilet.

There was a guy that was there, and he had been signed up for the library.

And he was sort of a newcomer.

And I remembered that that day because they kept calling out his name to go to the library and

he didn't come.

So they just left.

And a few more hours passed.

And suddenly, this guy from Jamaica, who had

like maybe one finger on his left hand and a huge amount of dreads all tied up in a pillowcase on his head.

Very nice guy.

He was mopping and he noticed that the feet under the stall hadn't moved.

Hadn't moved, hadn't moved.

So he starts knocking on the door.

No answer.

And he kicks it in, and the man is dead on the toilet.

All the blood rushed down to his legs.

And it's sort of early in the morning, so a lot of people are still in their bunks.

And they call,

you know, alert the corrections officer.

The corrections officer hits what, you know, colloquially known as the hits the body alarm.

And suddenly, this like huge number of staff from the from the prison from the facility, you know, administrators, people in suits, people in uniforms, people in lab coats running in, pull him off the toilet, lay him down.

I mean, he was long dead.

He'd probably been dead for an hour, I think.

They're doing this sort of CPR.

And at this point, everybody's awake.

So in that big mass of bunks, you see everybody up on their bunk, watching, watching, watching.

Because of course, that could have been any of us.

That could have been any of our last moments.

All the staff comes in.

So to block our view, a bunch of the staff line up like soccer players, you know, blocking a free kick, lined up like this.

So they could block whatever they were doing to this man's body.

And they take him out and they go on.

And we're all pretty shocked because we all thought they could call that body alarm for any of us.

And that's what our last moments would look like.

And then a few hours later, because we're all buzzing, we're all buzzing about it.

This guy comes in and says, gentlemen, sorry to say so-and-so died at the hospital.

And a guy stands up and says, He was dead here.

He was dead here.

He was dead here.

What are you going to tell his family?

Because we're all thinking, would they tell the truth to our families?

And the guy says, You're not a doctor.

What do you know?

What do you know?

And we all knew.

So none of us really talked about it on the phone calls because we were afraid that our phone calls would have gotten cut off.

I think I wrote about it in one letter.

And it was really harrowing.

Now, I understand why they have to do that.

I mean, the facility has rules and procedures, and most of them are there for rational reasons.

But when you see the system kind of kick up like that and sort of descend upon you, whether you're, you know, a corpse in your jail cell or me, almost a corpse from drugs in my apartment.

And the system suddenly yanks you, and your body's not really yours anymore.

It's very dramatic, very powerful, but it is part of life.

Do you guys know what happened to the guy?

I mean, I don't suspect any kind of foul play or anything like that.

I mean, I think he died of medical, natural causes.

And you were a theater director, right?

And now you're sitting inside MDC

in this giant box that never turns off with 120 men.

You're withdrawing from all the drugs you were on.

Have you had moments of thinking from where your life were going to here you are in this situation?

How was that contrast?

And how bad did it get for you mentally?

Well, listen, I mean, I had some very dark

weeks and months.

It probably took me a while to sort of get into a routine where I was functioning well.

Certainly, there was an intense amount of despair, humiliation, rage,

sorrow.

It really felt like the end of the world.

And there'd be days where I'd wake up and my whole body is just like baking

in resentment

and

shame.

And they're very intense feelings.

Mind going going a mile a minute, rumination, rage about the past, terror about the future.

So that was a very intense period of time.

And that lasted quite a while.

How long did it take you to finally get your life turnaround, I guess, when you decided to do something about it?

Oh, well, I mean, that sort of happened in stages.

You know, certainly in the context of the jail, I got into a routine.

I was able to write letters.

I actually did edits edits on a musical book, a play that had a reading.

While I was in jail, I sent edits.

There was a reading done of something I wrote at the York Theater on the Upper East Side.

So I was able to stay creative.

I worked on some other projects, started on a play, lots of letters.

So, and I got in shape.

I lost weight.

exercised, I, you know, prayed, I read, I did everything I could to function well.

I learned how to eat.

I was able to

make a little financial deal with one of the Muslims on the unit who got fresh vegetables, called a common fare tray.

And I would pay him in stamps.

So I figured out how to get fresh vegetables, figure out how to eat a little healthy.

So I got into a routine even in that room.

So that was step one.

Can you actually, we're going to get into the food

in a moment because we have, we're very curious about that.

Can you walk us through exactly from the moment you wake up, the day, hour by hour, what does that look like?

My day?

Okay, great.

So I wake up.

I'm an early bird, one of the very few.

And in fact, thankfully, I'm very happy to say I got a job.

And my job was the really, there were a few early morning jobs.

Two guys served the quote-unquote breakfast.

And my job was to wipe down all the glass surfaces.

So there weren't, it's not windows really to the outside, but glass surfaces on doors, you know, onto the hallway, between little rooms.

And my job is to wipe those down every morning, which took about 45 minutes to an hour.

So I would eat something, make some coffee, I would go about, and most everyone else was sleeping.

And the way I wiped them down, I had a little cleaning bottle and I had socks that I cut in half and had a little sock on my hand.

And I went glass surface by glass surface.

And that was my job.

I think I was paid like 25 cents an hour.

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But having a job meant I got a slightly better piece of chicken on Chicken Day, which was a very big deal back then.

Is it because you purchased the chicken or they no, no, it's just what, you know, one day a week they serve chicken and that's like the one piece of like healthy, fresh protein.

And so

you want to have an inn with the guy serving the chicken so that you get the best possible piece of chicken.

And since I had a job, and since actually I was pretty popular, believe it or not, and I had a good piece of chicken.

And so I had that job.

So after I was done with that, then I would usually cross the hall to that little concrete space and I would exercise.

And thankfully, thankfully, on the commissary, I was able to buy a little AM-FM radio.

And that was my lifeline.

Do you remember how much it costed?

I don't.

I want to say like $35, $55.

I forget.

Wow.

So that means you have to work.

Well, no.

Well, I had, thankfully, my family put money on my commissary account.

So like that allowed me to buy shoes.

Shoes and the radio were the lifesaver.

Oh,

when I got those shoes the first time, because the shoes they gave me were just agonizing.

My feet were like

in horrible shape.

I was in a lot of pain.

And when the shoes came, oh, I felt like...

I mean, I was just floating.

I felt like I was floating.

I was so thrilled.

What kind of shoes?

Some tennis shoes.

I forget which.

But I was so thrilled to get those shoes.

I felt like a million bucks because you're wearing, most of the days, you're wearing this, you know, tan onesie all day, you know, during like quote-unquote business hours.

You could get into you know, sweatpants and stuff, but during the work hours, you wear the tan onesie and the uh and the shoes.

I felt like a million bucks, but then you get the radio.

Now, the radio was everything to me, and it's New York City, so a lot of great radio.

So, I could listen to commercial radio, listen to public radio, listen to music, all all kinds of different music.

And just hearing,

honestly, at the beginning, just hearing the English language, you know, through the radio, because there wasn't a ton of it on my unit.

I mean, there was quite a bit, but hearing, you know, serious commentary, news, business, information, that radio was everything to me.

And so I'd go across and I'd listen to the radio, and it was 2008, so it was during the Obama campaign, and I'm like super into it and presidential year.

So I'd walk in circles in that little room, listen to the radio,

basically until lunch.

And at the beginning, when I was there, I got basically all of my food through the main line.

But over time, I looked, I noticed, I observed people who were eating better and how they did it and how they assembled items on the commissary, fresh vegetables from the common fare tray.

And I figured out how to make better food for myself.

And I had a shift, a shift.

There was one

microwavable

Tupperware container that floated from person to person so they could heat up their alternative concocted meals.

And I had like a shift where the Tupperware container came to me.

I'd throw in the vegetables, the mackerel, fish, whatever else I could, heat in the microwave, eat it, wash it, and pass that little beaten up.

It was so beaten up, this plastic little object that had fed who knows how many people over how many years circulating.

It looked like, you know, it looked like something you would pick out of the rubble of Chernobyl.

I mean, it really looked rough.

And I had my shift and I would eat and then I'd wash it and hand the Tupperware tray to the next guy.

And, but, you know, I figured out how to eat.

It took me a long time.

It took me months for my brain to kind of readjust and function again.

I had done such harm to my brain with illegal drugs,

legal pharmaceuticals, benzos,

and then the concussion.

I was in horror.

But eventually I started, I could feel my brain coming back online.

And I figured out how to adapt.

So that's the little trait.

You've just shared that trait every single day?

Every single day, I'd get the little, the guy would, my friend,

would bring me the little, this is a little Tupperware container, you know, just like a little storage thing, microwavable.

And it just passed around.

It allowed people to mix various food items together.

And there was a microwave oven on our unit, and people would prepare little dishes for themselves.

Wow.

And I had my turn.

Yeah.

Okay, so after lunch, what's the rest of the day?

After lunch,

for the most most part, once it had passed midday,

then I was just reading.

You know, the other thing I would do in the morning, it would be write, you know, write letters all by hand, write notes.

And that was mostly in the mornings, because once the afternoons came around, it was very hard to get a tabletop, very hard to get a flat surface, because those were sort of taken over by other men eating.

playing cards, playing dominoes, those big dominoes gays are slapping the dominoes down.

And so it was hard to get a flat surface to like eat on or write on.

So that was mostly during the day.

So in the afternoons, I often would read the newspaper.

God bless my father.

He sent me his New York Times subscription.

So I'm going to read the New York Times.

And sometimes I'd see like...

Some of my Harvard friends in the New York Times.

One guy like became a senator.

Another guy's a federal judge.

Another, it's some of my theater friends.

I'd see their shows, you know.

and uh was it emotionally hard to see those I laugh looking back because it was just such a wild experience at the time

look it was hard of course it was hard but it was what it was it was reality it was a reality that I'd participated in creating it was where I was so a lot of New York Times reading a lot of book reading a lot of conversations Sometimes I would go because there'd be a sort of daily afternoon kind of Bible Bible study-ish type of the Christians would convene and maybe look at a Bible passage or pray.

Sometimes I would join them.

And then once the evening rolls around, I just started to wind down.

Is there a dinner?

Oh, yeah, of course, yes.

The mainline dinner comes along.

And when you say mainline dinner.

Right, right.

Thanks.

So mainline is sort of just the slang term or the term for like when food is served.

They open a little, you know, on the unit or in that single room, a little opening would open in the, in the quote-unquote little kitchen area and they would serve food through that little opening, counter here, little opening, other inmates there in gloves, mask, hairnet, all that.

And the food would roll down on these big sort of wagons and served by certain inmates to the others.

Trays come along, line up, get the food.

And most people would eat that way.

I would often eat that way.

but towards the end, I really depended on my own little concoctions and mostly just ate one meal a day.

So you're saying you don't take the plate anymore.

By the end, I might get little bits here and there, but by the end, I'd sort of learned

how to prepare slightly better, slightly healthier food for myself.

How bad is the food?

What exactly are they serving?

Oh, gosh.

Well, it's really a wide range.

I want to start with the positive.

I have to say, I have to respect the people who work there.

It's a very hard place to work.

It's a very impossible assignment.

That facility is very stressful.

So I'm going to emphasize the positive.

Holiday meals, they did a great job.

They did a great, I mean, they really put an effort.

What's the holiday meals?

Thanksgiving.

Christmas, 4th of July, they were the main ones.

And they really made such a difference.

I think there was a Cornish hen for Christmas, turkey for Thanksgiving, a lot of trimmings.

So those special meals,

you know, I think there was hot dogs or barbecue or something on 4th of July.

They made an effort and I appreciated it, I will say.

Anyone who's looking, thank you for that.

You know, the fresh chicken, the chicken day, that was probably the best.

If you're really lucky, you know, you get the breast with the leg attached and all of that.

But they're not all like that.

Sometimes you get a thigh, sometimes they're little pieces.

I mean, people get very emotional of how the quality of their chicken piece.

And, you know, if you're the guy serving and you have a grudge of somebody, you might give them a very lousy piece of chicken.

And that's war right there.

That's war right there.

Would that start a fight?

I mean, it could.

It could.

But I don't know if I saw anything over that.

But that would be definitely a source of resentment.

You know, because remember, there's some guys who've been on that unit for years, and some guys on that unit have known each other.

Two cousins, you know, all of that.

And then you have other guys who are just passing through two or three days or passing through and they might have some rivalry from the street with someone someone else on that unit.

Not too often.

But so there's a mix of people.

And if you're just off the street, you've been there for three days and you feel like someone has shown you disrespect of some kind, that can create tension and occasionally physical altercation.

Are those bad?

Do you see blood?

I saw a few.

As I said, for the most part, there was pressure not to have those fights.

And when those fights, you know, teed off, for the most part, people would come and take them apart.

You know, because I think there was an understanding that like when two men have committed to that fight, you cannot back down without losing face.

And so it was the sort of

duty of everyone around you, knowing you can't back down, to either stop it before it happened or to pull you off each other.

But there were a few.

And, you know, fights just pop off.

Pites pop off.

They pop off in jail.

They pop up on the subway.

They pop off on the sidewalk.

Fights happen.

They pop off on sports fields.

And sometimes they pop off and they could be pretty brutal.

I mean, there's one fight I saw.

Both guys I liked, nice guys, but something, and they had been like friends and friendly for weeks and months, but something snapped.

They got into it.

And the bigger guy beat the other guy out of his clothes.

I mean, the guy was just destroyed.

I think by the end, he had maybe his underwear left, and they had to drag him out.

So things pop off.

Is there a solitary confinement for?

Oh, yeah.

It's called special housing unit and protective custody.

They're different versions.

So some people might end up for a long while in a solitary cell for disciplinary issues, for violence, for rule violations.

They use it for discipline.

And some people might end up there if they're a high-profile

prisoner that needs extra protection.

I'm assuming you've never been.

Have you heard from other guys who got in there or came out of there?

Oh, sure.

Describing.

Oh, sure.

I mean, listen, I had a few days, not many.

I had a few days where it was basically

on lockdown.

This is in the medical intake unit.

On lockdown, by myself in a cell, except for mealtimes.

And that is brutal.

It is brutal.

And I just what it does to the human brain, we're not designed to be in that kind of isolation.

It's not healthy.

I understand for safety reasons, it has to be done sometimes, but it's tough.

And I had people I knew well who had a violation of some kind, were dragged off to the shoe.

Not dragged.

That's not fair.

And firmly escorted to the isolation.

And they come back, you know, weeks later, months later, ashen, thinner, because there's nothing to do all day, 23-hour lockdown.

And you would see it took a while being around other people to start

looking healthy again.

Wow.

And that was just part of being in a facility like that.

You say months.

Look, some people would probably spend their entire time in a room like that.

I didn't know anybody.

I mean, I knew people who went there for, I mean, I want to say typically it's like six weeks or so, but maybe a few were longer.

I would tell you something that was the most amazing thing.

You could always tell when someone was about to go home, that someone found out something about their case or they knew they were about to get out the next day.

And as soon as they heard that news, you'd see the gray, ashen face.

Color would come back.

I remember this one guy, he found out he's getting out the next day.

I forget what reason.

But it was like he was 20 years younger.

Like that.

Life just rushed back.

And I remember because I didn't know I was getting out till about eight hours before.

I found out the evening before the next day.

And as soon as I got off the phone, I walked back to my bunk and they said, you're getting out.

I could see it on your face.

Because, you know, that rush of life, you know, came back and it was visible on me too.

Wow.

No, we're going to get into that in a second.

I'm very curious about your whole experience re-entering.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, going back to the to the food.

Oh, yeah.

You said that, you know, the type of food that was being served.

And then you start making your own food.

And how did you get the fresh vegetable again?

I can tell you exactly.

So

they provide basically vegetarian trays and other special meals for people that have, but basically for vegetarians.

Now, again, this is a while ago.

I assume it's that way still, but this was me in 2008.

They had something called quote unquote a common fare tray, which basically had fresh vegetables.

And that was pretty common for

Muslims who had certain restrictions on the kind of meat they could eat.

And so, and other, I think,

some other religious groups, I think there was a Hindu guy who had a common fare tray.

And had I known, I would have requested that when I got there.

But so I just made a deal with somebody who had gotten a common fare tray, and I paid him in stamps.

And so I would get his lunch tray.

And that lunch tray gave me basically two meals worth of fresh vegetables.

And I would mix that in from the little mackerel fish, the little macs, as they call them, and any other kind of like seasonings, anything I could get off of the

commissary.

And I'd get my Tupperware and heat it up and eat it.

That is incredible.

You know, we read that SBF

in a report, he said that he's vegan.

And I'm assuming this is what he's on.

Are you saying that the common fare trait provides healthier and better food than you normal?

Well, I mean, it's sort of limited, as I recall you know I just remember it being sort of uncooked vegetables such as

oh gosh

carrots I guess celery I don't remember because I just chopped up whatever was there and threw it into the tray the chopper was I can explain exactly what the chopper was was you'd ask somebody who'd gotten

who'd gotten Pringles and you'd say when you're done with the Pringles can I have your Pringles tube and they'd say yes and you'd say thank you thank you and you'd take the bottom of the Pringles tube and you'd bend it back and forth until you had a little surface.

And so that half-bottom Pringles tube is how I chop my vegetables.

Wow.

Now, you don't want to be caught with that because that would be contraband.

But I think a lot of the corrections officers, if they saw you chopping vegetables, would leave you alone.

Wow.

Look, you got to live.

You adapt to survive.

You adapt, adapt, adapt.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's very fascinating.

What kind of other, I guess, weapons you seen?

You know, thankfully, I didn't see.

I mean,

I do know that before I got on that unit,

a few weeks or months earlier, my friend who came up and saw me and said, oh, I know you're from the street, he told me that a few weeks or months earlier, there was actually a conflict between two ethnic groups.

And there was sort of like a planned,

you know, for lack of a better word, rumble, you know, for the Westside story fans out there.

And he said he knew there was trouble because all the men from those two groups were all wearing their shoes to bed.

And that they had all taken their locks, because you could have a lock, order a lock off the commissary to lock up your little locker.

And they'd all taken the locks off, put them in socks,

and

put their shoes on and waited for their opportunity.

I think, let me tell you what I think it was, but I don't know for sure.

Don't quote me.

One of the corrections officers would go help the other unit on the same hallway do their count on the other unit.

So they had this like 20, 15 minute window where there were still cameras everywhere, but there was no physical officer on the unit.

And when they saw their moment, they, again, this is secondhand.

I didn't see this myself, jumped out of their

bunks and basically had kind of a

you know, little battle until officials came down and broke it up.

And many, most of the unit, most everyone of the unit was taken to the special housing unit, put in isolation for or in little two-man cells for a while.

They, you know, interviewed all of them.

And slowly most of the people came back.

Wow.

Yeah.

Look, it's just life.

It's just life.

It's Earth.

It's just planet Earth, normal stuff.

I found this little image online that has a list of the jobs

that that are available and how much they're paid.

Oh, yeah.

And the pay range from 12 cents to 40 cents.

Do everybody want a job in there?

And are there a difference in the jobs?

Are some of them more desirable than the other?

How do you even get a job?

So, yes, listen, these are again, this is just Earth and people.

So, there are some people that want to work, some people don't.

There are various range of jobs.

Some are more desirable than others, and people get them through various ways.

So, I got mine because because, you know, the

inmate who was sort of head of the, you know, cleanup crew, the head of the cadres on our unit, I didn't, they didn't call them cadres, another word for it, trustees or something, inmate workers

crew on our unit.

He saw me and just approached me.

He saw that I was up in the morning.

He saw I was a morning person and said, do you want a job?

This is the job in the morning.

And this is, and I said, yes, I was dying for a job.

I was dying just to have a task.

Even though it was like putting little socks, puppet-like hands and wiping down glass surfaces.

I was so thrilled to have a job.

I was there during the pre-trial period, but some people do their whole sentence at these detention facilities and they go in as a cadre and their jobs in some ways are better.

So somebody might, you know, do their whole two, you know, one year-long sentence there and work as a welder.

or work in the big kitchen downstairs or have a job that has a little more responsibility, a little bit more freedom of movement.

And those people generally are there serving their sentence.

The people who are on the pre-trial group the way I was or people who are kind of in transit,

you know, it's mostly jobs like on the units.

So they're not as desired, quote unquote, desirable as people who are there as cadres.

Basically, it really depends on the person.

Some people want to have something to do versus others just don't want to work.

And nobody's forcing you to do it.

It's your choice.

You can try to get a job or don't get a job.

I think people want to have a little assignment.

I think it's healthy.

I think most people like it.

The commissary.

What else do they have there?

You bought a radio?

You bought a pair of shoes?

Yeah.

It's actually kind of wide range.

You could probably see it online, actually.

I think you could buy bags of rice.

There are some some seasonings you could buy, batteries, batteries to the radio, stamps,

pads of paper, you know, just shaving cream.

I think for the women's unit, they had some, you know, rudimentary beauty products,

rudimentary stuff.

It's all rudimentary, you know, toiletry kinds of things,

soap.

But there are some sweets.

I mean, the big prize was like a six pack of soda.

That was like, you know, thrill.

Anything sugar, sugar was big.

So you could buy, I remember I got a Kit Kat bar the first time.

I taste a Kit Kat.

I love so thrilled to taste sugar.

Eventually I stopped getting that, but you buy coffee, instant coffee.

So that was big for me.

Would the Kit Kat bar be the same prize or is it jacked up?

I don't really remember.

Probably everything is jacked up.

Probably everything is.

I mean,

oh, but I mean, oh, the other big thing.

Oh, this is big.

Sweatpants and a sweatshirt.

Huge.

Oh, my gosh, so big.

Once you get the sweatpants, man, you're like a king.

Because, you know, you're just in that onesie uniform.

And over time, you can buy things to make your life marginally more comfortable.

But the margin in there feels like it's huge.

You mentioned in another interview that the currency there.

is macro filet.

Oh, yeah.

So when I was there, the main courtesy were stamps and and these little blue packages of mackerels.

They call them MACs.

So each little mackerel fillets like you can get at a grocery store.

Tinned fish is really

in right now.

And

those little packets of macro fillets sort of functioned as dollars.

So you will buy it from the commissary first?

Buy it from the commissary.

So you'd get a stack of Macs.

And that was my main source of protein.

So I'd buy a lot of those.

I would also use them to pay, you know, because the guy who ran the laundry, if you gave him a Mac, he would make sure your laundry got all back to you.

He'd fold it, put it on your bed.

You'd give a Mac to the guy who was the barber.

Because, you know, one inmate basically was in charge of the clippers and once a week would like trim your beard, trim your hair.

You pay him in a Mac.

But the big thing was you'd gamble with Macs.

Now, I'm not a gambler, but you'd see guys, they play poker with that bump, bump, bump, the Macs coming out and they have a big night and they're coming back to their bunk, this arm full of Macs and like shoving them all into their lockers.

Oh, it's huge.

And one night,

this is a gambling story.

The one night I got really sick, running really bad fever.

And my bunky, who was lovely, who had like five kids, lovely, lovely man.

And he saw that I was in bad shape and he checked my temperature by like putting his hands around my ankles.

And he's like, you're in bad shape.

And he went out and played poker.

He's really good at poker.

And he went out and played poker and he got me saltines and like sprite.

Wow.

And it was like the nicest thing he ever done to me.

It was the sweetest thing.

He like went out, gambled, brought his max out and gambled for saltines and sprite to make me feel better.

And I could, I mean, it brought tears to my eyes at the moment.

Is this the same guy you ran into later at a grocery store?

No, no.

Well, actually, you know what?

I actually did run into him once.

He was working on a construction crew around the corner from this school I was working at.

And so I did see him.

I said, is that him?

Holy cow.

And we did interact.

And I think I have his phone number somewhere.

Lovely guy.

Lovely wife.

Beautiful children.

Wow.

You know, we heard somewhere that the ramen noodle, instant ramen noodles.

Oh, yes, of course.

That's big.

Thanks for bringing that up.

Oh, yeah.

Love the ramen.

Everyone love.

I'm not a ramen noodle person, but those are big and you can get those on the commissary.

But those are not the currency in your

that, not as I remember.

Okay.

I mean, obviously, everything's currency.

Currency is just what you trade.

You know, so you know, one guy, he started a business and he would draw you greeting cards for your kids or your wife for holidays.

And he had markers.

I don't know how he got the markers, but he had markers and paper.

And you would pay him in stamps or Macs.

And he would give you a personalized greeting card for you to mail to your kid for their birthday or your wife for, you know your anniversary or whatever and that was his business and so i think he accepted payment in mac i don't know if he accepted payment but you accept payment in whatever you know batteries are valuable those are good you know obviously the sugar sodas that's valuable but i would say the main unit of currency was the mac

you know obviously everyone has different levels of money, I guess, right?

We're talking about Diddy and SPF.

They probably have infinite amount of money to get everything on the commissary list times 10, right?

They probably can have 50 max to give it to everyone.

Do you think that comes with more privilege than they can live more comfortably?

As I recall, there was a maximum you could spend

each month or every two weeks or however long it was.

So they wouldn't have been able to like max out the commissary.

I mean, they would have maxed out whatever the monthly limit was, but that had some.

So there was a ceiling.

Now, I'm sure someone who is wealthy and famous, that there would be people saying, look, if I can get you extra stuff on my commissary order, if you want to put money into my account, they're always, look, you know, everyone's transacting, everyone's doing business.

This is still Earth, remember.

Everyone's looking for a deal, looking for a way to get over, looking for a way to get in.

All of that happened.

I will tell you this, one of the most exciting things I ever seen in my whole life.

There was

a sort of recreation guy who worked at a Bureau of Prisons, and one day he brought in a Monopoly board.

I saw the most exciting game of Monopoly I'd ever seen.

And they set it up on this table, and the four guys were standing around the Monopoly board.

And the Monopoly board, the game went so fast, and they're like playing

fast, fast, fast, and they're making side deals and paying people around the side.

And it was like the most exciting thing I'd ever seen because these guys were like very sophisticated in their own worlds,

businessmen, hustlers, if you want to say that.

And they're hustling each other and they're cheating, they're breaking the rules and they're screaming at each other.

And it was thrilling.

So, I mean,

to say that everyone's still, you know, life hasn't stopped.

So they want to go talk to their wife.

They want to find a way to make $10 gambling.

Life doesn't stop.

How bad were the summers and winters?

Well, there were times on my unit

where the air conditioning didn't work.

And I think that was, I want to say, more than a week.

And that was brutal.

I mean, that was brutal.

Very hot because there's no air circulation.

There's no fresh air.

You know, they put some big fans in the, you know, the door to the hallway, but that didn't really provide any relief.

There's nothing you can do.

120 people in a room.

Well, 120 bunks.

I would say the actual population number was like more like 100, 105.

You know, maybe got up to 110 a few times.

And summer in Brooklyn can get.

Oh, yeah, I mean, very hot.

And then a few times in winter.

There was no heat.

Very, very cold.

And a lot of these men were from the equatorial countries, you know, whether the Caribbean or the equator, South America, or, you know, West Africa, other places.

And for some of those guys who'd never really been in winter, that was like brutal.

And you look at, they wouldn't even get out of their beds.

They're so cold.

And you see, like,

uh, just you know, men basically, you know, shivering under their sheets in their bunk all day.

The cold didn't bother me as much, but no, I mean, it's cold, it's cold, you know, it's cold.

Sometimes, yeah, it's cold.

Can you buy more clothes to wear?

Or?

Well, listen, I mean, for people who've been there longer, if you had your sweatsuit and then you put your uniform over it,

and then depending on which correction officer was in charge, you could put something over your head.

I mean, basically hats, you know, do-rags, a lot of that stuff was not allowed in certain parts of the room, depending on the day.

So I started losing my hair in there.

So my hair would get cold.

I mean, there are times I'd wake up and my hair is on my pillows.

I'm stressed out.

I'm miserable.

I'd wake up.

My hair's like falling out, falling out in jail.

So, yeah, I mean, if you had hair, you had more layers of clothes, you had a better chance.

But for guys guys who were passing through or who didn't have sweatpants, sweat shirts,

yeah, it was cold.

I mean, it was cold.

You were there 2008.

That's what, 17 years ago.

Do you know anything about the condition today?

Is it as bad?

Is it worse?

Is it better?

I can only tell you what I've heard secondhand.

And that's from someone I'm still in touch with who had an office there.

And

what I've heard is that the unit that I was on, those dorm units are basically just used for women now.

And that the men are all in the new building where they're in the sort of double-tier cell units that I describe for medical intake.

From my research, that's where Luigi Mangioni is in.

Oh, yeah.

And SBF and Diddy, they're in

Four North.

That's level four.

And level three are for women.

That's how they communicate to each other

up and down.

So my unit isn't men anymore.

I mean, the only things I've heard are maybe slightly more demoralized staff.

Look, it's very hard just physically.

Look, it's New York.

You don't have lots of real estate.

So, if you need to keep all these people near a courthouse, just being New York, you know, things are going to be smaller, things are going to be tighter, things are going to be more crowded together.

A lot of people have cases here.

The Southern District of New York, Eastern District of New York, those are big districts.

They process a lot of people.

So, it's an intense setting just by reality, just by the nature of square footage and zip codes.

It's a hard place to be.

I can tell you one thing I did see.

One of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my whole life.

So, these men, a lot of these men hadn't been on the street for a long time, years.

There was a guy who's like, oh, when I got arrested, I was worried about my 8-track tape collection.

So, they hadn't been around, so they hadn't, you know, been around a woman for a long time.

And they had rules about you couldn't send in certain kinds of pictures the girlfriends could send in, or certain magazines had to be conservative in terms of how the women were dressed.

You know, the closest thing the men would get excited about is the 2008 Olympics.

And during the

beach volleyball competition, the men were lined up.

I go, oh my gosh, thrilled just looking up.

But one night, I don't know, this had to have been so against the rules.

I can't tell you how against the rules this must have been.

But out of the blue, one of the corrections officers rolled in and imagine like your high school teacher rolling in a TV and a VCR to show like a movie that night.

He rolls it in and rolls it into like one of the few spots where there's no like camera coverage, you know, a few blind spots in the cameras.

He rolls it in there and he puts on a

movie.

And I mean at the time I thought that's the nicest thing this guy ever done because these guys are so desperate and so pent up.

You know, these are young men.

These are young people.

You know, a lot of them are really young men.

And I'm telling you, people went nuts.

Now, a lot, I did not go over there, but a lot of guys, they left off their bunks and they ran over watching, watching the

movie.

And I'm sure someone's going to deny this happened, but I'm sure this happened.

And they would take turns going in and out of the bathroom stalls or in and out of the showers

to, you know,

finish themselves off.

And then they'd go back and watch a little longer.

And actually, I have to say, they were very polite about letting each other go in and out of the showers and the toilet stalls.

There was this odd sense of like good manners, you know, about how to handle this.

Now, I don't think this ever happened before.

If it did, I don't know.

But it was like this huge burst of energy, you know, from these men that were so

longing for any

contact or image or excitement or anything.

And then I think maybe 25 minutes passed.

I don't remember exactly.

I was a little like, I was afraid to even look or go over there, to be honest, because it was just like this frenzy is overstating it.

But let's say high-energy event.

And

then at some point,

the guy went back, the corrections officer went back, turned it off, wheeled the TV back.

The guys sort of, you know, made their way back to their bunks.

And I never saw anything like that before or since.

That is incredible.

How did that happen?

Who?

I have no idea.

But like,

the guard department.

Now, look, this is years ago.

The person is probably retired, enjoying a nice speech vacation.

And if not, you know, I wouldn't want to say anything to get anyone in trouble, you know.

But he was like young, and I think in a weird way, it was like generous, in a weird way, it was like kind,

you know, because

one of the serious consequences about breaking the law and ending up in a facility like that is you can be in the prime of life and go 10 years without being close to a woman.

And that's, you know, one of the hardest things for some young guys to adapt to or to process because all that energy, they're human beings, they're males, they're earth creatures, all those energies still exist within them.

So, in some ways, I thought that was an act of great kindness.

That guy brought it out.

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Did you have any experiences or at any moment you were genuinely feared for your life?

No, I had one moment of one moment where someone was angry about something I said.

And he was pissed.

But it dissipated and nothing came of it.

Can you?

I can tell you exactly.

I can tell you exactly.

It was May 2008.

And

one of the TVs was on.

There's no sound.

The TV was on.

And I said out loud, I thought Barack Obama was going to win.

And this guy, who was African-American from Pittsburgh, was sure I had only said that out loud because I was trying to humiliate him and his friends.

Because, of course, that would never happen.

They would never let an African-American man win the presidency.

So he thought the only reason I would say that out loud would be to humiliate the black men on my unit, which was not my case.

I was at that time, I was rooting for Barack Obama, and I really thought he was going to win early.

I thought he just had the

wins were going his direction.

And the guy was like pissed.

He thought I was trying to humiliate him.

And being humiliated and disrespect is a huge deal, a huge deal.

Not just in jail, everywhere on earth, but in jail too.

And I remember exactly.

So election night came and I like, I guess it was like eight o'clock.

They called Ohio for Obama.

I'm like, he won, because I knew if he won Ohio, he was going to win the whole thing.

But most of the men were like, no, no, no.

They can still take it away from him.

California is still out there.

And I'm thinking, he's going to get California.

But they're like, no, they'll still, there's still time.

You know, the little radios, people were three, four to an earbud listening on the radios.

It was a huge event.

It was a huge event.

Unfortunately, they turned off the TVs at like 11.

So

we weren't able to watch the acceptance speech.

But when they called it for him, that guy, who had like, I think, seven bodies on his case, so he had a pretty serious case.

And he hadn't, we hadn't spoken since that day, although we'd pass each other.

He comes up to me, tears like streaming down his face, takes me by the hand and says, you told me, you told me.

And like, there was, whatever energy was between us was gone.

And it was a very, I mean, it was incredible to be there that night.

And the men did were crowded around little earbuds, you know, the little radio we had.

So you'd have three around each earbud straining to hear the acceptance speech.

It was a huge event in that room.

Super exciting, very powerful.

And actually, when they called it, another guy who

was hilarious, who I loved.

It was absolutely hilarious.

They, because

of my skin color, assumed I was rooting for McCain.

And so a guy comes up and he's got like an ice bucket, like they would pour over the winning or losing like coach.

Luckily, I ran away in town

in time, but the idea was to like douse me in the ice because, of course, I had lost because of my skin color.

My team had lost.

Was it like the most memorable election experiences for you?

Would the emotion be way more intensified in a room like that, in a setting like that?

Well, everything's intensified intensified in a setting like that because you've got 100 men with these huge feelings going through the worst times of their lives.

Everything felt big.

Everything felt big.

But I'll never forget that.

That, of course, was a thrill to be a part of that.

And then, of course, the room was just buzzing because it was just absolutely impossible

to

most of the men on that unit that something like that could happen.

Were there any conflicts because of the election result?

No.

Really?

After that was called,

things move on.

Oh yeah.

And the guy who was going to pour ice on my head was doing it with love and was doing it like as a joke.

I find that interesting in comparative.

The world was different.

I mean,

life on my unit was different.

There really wasn't

tensions like that.

Political, racial, ethnic, religious.

We all pretty much on my unit, thank God, got along.

The only time there was like a moment of ethnic tension was there were a group of guys

that all spoke Russian, and two were Russian, and one was from the country of Georgia.

So he spoke Russian, but he was ethnically Georgian in the Caucasus region.

And everyone called him Russia.

That was like his nickname because he spoke Russian.

Lovely guy.

And there was this day when Russia invaded Georgia.

And suddenly, he didn't want to hang out with the other Russian guys.

He was like, F you guys.

And he made an announcement.

My nickname is no longer Russia.

Don't call me that name anymore.

And he was very serious about it because he saw that invasion and kicked into his nationality.

And so his relationship to that event changed his social relationship.

And I didn't see him talk to the Russian guys again.

Wow.

So you're saying there's not that many cliques or groups that have conflicts and tensions all the time.

Not,

I didn't feel that way.

I didn't feel that way.

There certainly were, you know, there's East Africans, West Africans, African Americans.

Those were Muslims were kind of known group.

Obviously, the Spanish speakers kind of hung out.

There was the great debate I saw twice between the East Africans and the West Africans was where was the Garden of Eden?

Was it in Ethiopia or Nigeria?

And of course, they were both sure that they were right.

It was great.

I mean, it was a thrill.

You were only told eight hours before you were getting released.

You know, what was that like?

Someone just pull you aside, delivered the news.

And then what happened after that?

The last eight hours and after you were released?

So I, uh, there was some expectation that I might get out after one year.

Well, actually, there was some expectation after six months, but they said no to that.

After a year, they said yes.

And so I found out from a phone call, either to my lawyer or to my family

the night before.

And they said, You're

getting out.

And so that was it.

The next morning, they said, You're going to court.

So they woke me up early.

I went through that whole elaborate process of being taken out of the unit, through the hallways, moved through.

What was going through your mind when you heard that news?

Was it, would you say that's like the happiest day of your life?

Or were you on cloud night?

I mean, it just was like, it's like a, you know, just burst burst of energy.

You know, it was

super intense.

I don't know.

It didn't,

I can't really describe it.

It's not like winning anything.

It's not like my case was over.

It's not like my problems were over.

But I certainly was like, it was just this kind of

electrified, you know.

And I said my goodbyes.

I mean, I felt close to a lot of those guys.

You know, one guy came out, tears coming down his face, you know.

Wow.

And

they were so happy for you that they were crying.

Well, they were sad.

You know, they were sad to say goodbye.

You know, I mean, we were each other's whole life.

No iPhones,

no leaving the room to go anywhere else.

We were each other's whole life.

And we'd gone through some of the biggest moments of our lives together.

So the relationships were, I mean, not like,

I don't know, a very unique kind of bond, but certainly close.

I mean, I would love to see some of those guys again.

We're not allowed to be in touch, you know, during your period of basically probation, supervised release.

You can't contact anyone else with the felony record for a few years.

And who knows where they are?

So I went out and went through the, you know, the basement tunnels, got to the

intake processing room, changed clothes, shackled hands and feet, hooked up to the other guys, put on that bus, you know, taken up, I think, up an elevator, maybe even, out the gates in Sunset Park, driven back to the courthouse, in the

shackled hand and feet again.

You know, you're like shuffling along in the bullpen at the courthouse.

The courthouse.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yes.

500 Perl.

Yes, yes, Laura Manhattan.

And suddenly they take me up to the courtroom still handcuffed and still in my prison uniform.

And waiting to pick me up was this woman who I'd worked with, good friend, a woman who my mother had stayed with when she came to visit me.

And she was there and she had clothes for me.

I had street clothes, pants, belt, shirt, my house keys, credit card.

And there she was.

And she saw me in that uniform, handcuffed, which I'm sure was a shock for her.

And then suddenly they take the handcuffs off and they say, okay, go home.

And you just put on my street clothes.

And she walked me out and she put me in a cab.

I got a little way in the cab, but I got car sick because, of course, I'd never seen anything move faster than someone walking for a year.

So I had to lean out and throw up on the sidewalk.

Wow.

And suddenly I'm like back in my apartment,

you know, by myself

and in my clothes.

And my brain's still buzzing because of the noise, the light,

the stress.

And it took me, I don't know, probably a year or two really to decompress.

Wow.

But I'll never forget being able to like close the bathroom door.

I was like, oh my gosh, this is the luxury of being able to close the bathroom.

No one lived with me.

I'm like, I'm closing this bathroom door every time the rest of my life.

But also being able to like pick what I ate.

What did you eat the first day?

I went out for sushi.

I went to Gourmet Garage, 7th Avenue, South and 10th Street, which is now closed, unfortunately.

And I think I got like salmon sushi.

And I think I got some

Ben and Jerry's.

But I hardly knew, could process the choice,

you know, walking through the sidewalk.

Everything was,

you know, sort of foreign.

Not foreign.

Everything was just, you know, I just couldn't.

It took a while to process normal life as normal again.

It took a How was the first night going from only sleeping in the middle?

Oh, the bed felt amazing.

Bed felt, it was thrilling to be in a bed, my own bed, my stuff, my TV, my books, my clothes, my own underwear, socks.

Oh,

thrilling.

So you had no trouble falling asleep?

No trouble falling asleep.

I got my first iPhone.

I sent my first text within a few days, which was like 2009, which I'd never done before.

And it's like I slowly came back online.

It took a long time.

It was not very long.

It was just a few days before I

flew to Missouri and where I stayed with my parents for until my sentencing.

And after sentencing, it was done.

Well,

I had three more years of what they call supervised release, like probation.

So in that first year, I had a few more times where I'd do in-person check-ins, drug tests,

where they visit your house, normal, rational kind of systems in place to make sure that someone doesn't cause,

you know, readjusts to life as a law-abiding citizen.

I think throughout this whole interview, I think everybody can tell how much passion you have for helping all these people.

That's kind of what you do today now, right?

Can you tell us about what you do?

How did you even get this job and what does it mean for you?

Well, as you'd said earlier, I had worked in the theater for my career before I got in trouble.

And I went back and did some directing again, directed an off-Broadway musical, directed at a drama school, but the money wasn't enough.

And thankfully, kind of out of the blue over LinkedIn, I connected with Michael Santos, who is really a big leader in helping people that are going through the system.

He spent over 20 years, over 9,000 days, I think over 26 years in prison.

And he gave himself a world-class education.

He helped a lot of people.

And he met a business partner, Justin Paperni, and the two of them started basically a consulting firm to help people go through that legal process to start pivoting towards the future, make choices that made sense, choices that were adaptive, prepare for sentencing.

Because when I was going through this, I was totally disoriented.

I felt like it was the end of my life.

I couldn't get sober.

I did a lot of of stuff to hurt myself, or I should say a lot of bad choices.

I did not adapt.

I felt total despair and totally lost.

And these two guys have put their voices out there to help people just like I was guide them through this situation.

Because a lot of people that go through the system, especially the federal system, which has a different set of crimes they prosecute than the state system.

A lot of people, it's their first case.

And so they said, do you want to come work for us?

Because one of the things we do is that in preparation for sentencing, we help defendants tell their stories.

You know, over like 95% of federal cases end with a guilty plea.

So these are people who have accepted responsibility, know they're going to be sentenced.

They're not saying they didn't do anything.

And

Michael and Justin started this firm and part of that was to help the defendants and their families write letters to the judge so the judge could see their case in the context of their whole life.

They could accept full responsibility, talk about the victims, talk about their plans to make amends, but talk about other things, talk about their future plans, talk about how they can use their time in prison to be productive, to give themselves an education, to shift their thinking from self-destructive and harmful behavior to a different kind of attitude towards life.

One that's sober, one that's productive, one that's focused on positive activity,

obeying the law, not doing harm.

And so I really was moved that they invited me to be part of their team.

And that was, you know, seven plus years ago.

And I've now worked with hundreds of people going through the system from all over the country.

From Alaska to Hawaii to Maine to Florida.

People that from all over the world, their cases are here.

People of all ages, you know, from someone someone who's 20 to someone who's in their 70s, all kinds of conduct, all kinds of lengths of sentences.

A lot of people that are famous, people that have been on TV, people with big cases, people with big consequences, and otherwise, it's a tiny case.

And you can't believe they even bothered bringing it.

And they end up getting, you know, home confinement or probation.

Or somebody who goes through the pretile process, the hell of all that for years and years, and the case gets dropped.

So people go through the system for all kinds of reasons,

having broken the law for all in all kinds of ways, but the system is still the system.

And when a case starts, it feels like an earthquake in the middle of your life and not just yours, your family.

And you can be sitting there out on bail

and find out, boom, they're taking your house.

Boom, you have a billion-dollar company you founded.

It's gone.

Your reputation is ruined.

The

DOJ puts out a press release and describes you in the worst possible way.

Puts stuff out that like it's not been proven in court, but just putting out allies.

So it's just huge feelings, whether you're in jail or not.

You sort of lose your story.

Suddenly the government's telling your story and the government's just going to tell what's going to help them win.

Now, there's a place for a justice system.

I respect it.

We need an orderly way to process harm that people do to each other.

We need to have laws.

It's not America worldwide.

There are jails and and laws and judges and police.

It's part of being on earth.

And I respect the need for that.

But when the case is United States versus me,

it's intense.

And they win and they're very good at winning and they know how to do it.

And they're very, they have a lot of experience.

So when you're on the receiving end of that,

it's painful.

And not everyone survives that.

Not everyone survives the despair or the loss.

Not everyone can see their way through to the other side.

And so my role with this consulting firm, which is called White Collar Advice, and a nonprofit I'm starting called Defendant Support, you know, just whatever I can do as someone who can help them tell their story, help talk about sobriety, tell them about my experience.

Because the truth is, I feel happier, younger, more optimistic, better than I have my whole life.

And I had to go through that to get here.

And they can hear that in my voice.

And I can be on the phone with them.

I might know some of these defendants for years between when they get their target letter or when they get arrested to their sentencing hearing.

Some people I know years after.

I had lunch with some guy who I wrote his, helped him write his

personal narrative, I don't know, 2018.

And he was like, he's in horrible shape.

I was in horrible shape.

If you'd seen me at my lowest moments, shackled hands and feet or in a cell 23 hours a day, you'd have thought, this guy's not going to survive.

This guy's in horrible shape.

But people can get through that.

They can reckon with harm.

They can take responsibility.

They can make amends.

They can go through a healing process.

And part of that healing process, that process of reckoning can be painful, but it's one season of life.

Even if you've done something serious, even if you've really done serious harm, it's one season of life.

And if you start heading in the right direction, there's a path to healing there's a path to making amends there's a path to making peace with your victims there's a path to reconnecting with community and family ending despair the darkness can lift but you got to head towards the light and so if i can help someone do that i mean sometimes when someone changes directions they pivot in the right direction they take the right steps they take responsibility and make amends in the right way a judge can see that and a judge can see that someone has done that work.

And that might get them a lighter sentence.

So you help people when they're in their darkest time.

Oh, yes.

Always, many times talking to people on their worst days.

But I hear that, and I can already picture them getting better.

You know, because I'm in a sober fellowship.

I've seen people come in death's door, come back to life and get...

years of sobriety or someone catch a case, get arrested, feel like it's the end of their life, and see them come back to life.

I've seen it over and over, and the path is available for everybody.

Exactly who should be reaching out to you or your firm?

When the feds are knocking on their door, are you mainly focusing on the white-collar crimes?

Well, for whitecollaradvice.com, you know, my bosses, Justin Poperney and Michael Santos, have a huge amount of mitigation information for free for anybody.

So you can get a lot of information just by going to their website.

Prisonprofessors.org, I think, is a nonprofit that has lots of incredible educational materials for people that are in jail right now.

It's all about getting people through the system to rejoin the world as good neighbors, family members.

So if somebody's in trouble, has a relative in trouble, go see what information is there.

Some people want to know more about me.

They can go to bradraus.com.

They can see about my whole life.

Because even though most people just wanted me to talk about jail, I had a whole life before, a whole life after.

And I help people in other ways.

There are other ways, people going through the system that a nonprofit, hopefully next year, defendant support will be there.

People have reached out to me to talk to their classes, to

come to conferences.

All that's available.

But for somebody who's in trouble, who has a family member with a case,

really the first stop, if I were to suggest we go to my boss's website, there are other consulting firms and companies who do that, but my two bosses is is dedicated,

you know, since 2008, I think they started this, 2009.

They've worked with thousands of people.

And the amount of information they've collected over the years is great.

And a lot of that people can get for free, their YouTube videos, or if they want some services that cost money, they can talk to them about that.

How important is it for, you know, for example, you're writing a letter to the judge, right?

The difference in, you know, you guys providing a well-written letter versus someone who doesn't have that.

how big of an impact could that make

impact is different there every judge has their own frame of mind and attitude um

i think you know these letters and doing them yourself not by ai because ai letters don't do the trick i think the process of putting the letter together is very healthy.

Because in my mind, I don't care so much.

I don't care so much about how, what the sentence level is.

A lot of that's set by formula.

And whether they get a little less or a little more, that's not what's in my heart.

It's in my heart is turning them from that dark moment of despair to reckoning what happened in a way that's honest and orderly and

gets them through this process.

It's very painful and can take many years

so that they come out the other side and they're better than when they started.

I certainly am in better shape now before I went through the system.

And a lot of people we work with come out in the best physical, mental, intellectual, educational, spiritual shape of their whole life.

And you can have that positive journey.

And sometimes putting it all together, where you look at, okay, this trauma happened to me was young.

I grew up in a war zone.

I was sexually abused.

My mother was murdered in front of me.

All these things that I've heard about, you know, and that injured my thinking.

And it got me off track.

I developed a gambling addiction, a drug addiction.

I started doing harm to myself.

I was desperate for money.

I broke the law.

Now I have victims.

Like when you put it all together in the right way, people can survive their story.

They can heal their hearts.

And their best days can be in front of them.

What advice would you give someone who's, let's say they're in trouble, they're at a very, very hard time in their life?

Well, first of all, don't break the law.

Following the law is a very good idea.

I really suggest it.

So following the law is good.

You know, taking basic care of your health.

Eat well.

Don't pour drugs or alcohol in your body.

Don't get too isolated.

Make sure you stay connected.

We're earth creatures.

We need other people.

We want good health.

Our brain is just one organ in our bodies.

So if we're in a dark place, we're despairing, we're having dark thoughts, doing harm to ourselves or others, don't have to stay in that.

You know, that you're in your winter and the spring is around the corner, but you got to head towards the light.

Don't stay isolated.

Don't keep secrets.

You know, with a lot of people that are in trouble, you know, in recovery, we say you're only as sick as your secrets.

So isolation is bad.

Pouring drugs and alcohol on your problems, on your feelings, on anger, all of that bad idea.

You know, don't double down on the harm.

Look for people in your life that feel safe, who are at peace.

That can be a teacher, that can be a sibling, that can be a neighbor.

Don't head towards the darkness.

If you're in a dark headspace, don't go online and look for more darkness.

Put the screen away.

Come back to life.

We want anybody who's in a dark place that can hear my voice.

We want you back.

We want you back.

Head towards the light.

Listen to my voice.

There are a lot of positive voices out there.

We want you to live.

We want you to be healthy.

We want you to be well.

And, you know, just keep heading in the right direction.

That's what I'd say.

There's a lot of love in the world.

Even when I was in jail, in one of the darkest times of my life, there were angels in there.

There was a psychiatrist who helped me.

There was a pharmtech that helped me.

There were other prisoners that helped me.

There are a lot of angels that you can't see sometimes until you need them.

But

having your heart open, looking for peace and light.

Don't double down on the darkness.

Don't bury yourself in your room, on your iPhones, in the darkness.

Get out.

Look for those angels.

They're all around.

Thank you.

How was that?

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