A corrections counselor is not there to provide any form of  meaningful assistance, nor to bring you from your criminal past into the straight and narrow. True corrections, where a person is reformed from his prior anti-social behaviour, and proceeds to adopt a law-abiding attitude, is not the aim of the US Bureau of Prisons. In truth and in fact, it is actually:

• Punishment: incarcerating the offender as a punitive act, both to publicly punish him, and to (hopefully) deter others from following along the same criminal path, through fear that the same treatment will be visited upon them. The politically correct term for punishment is justice.

• Incapacitation: To take the offender out of the geographic area where he or she has been committing criminal acts, thus preventing them from continuing to plague the community. This can be very important, where the offender has a prominent role, for example, as a money launderer servicing drug kingpins in a major urban area. If you are  absent, you cannot aid and abet the criminal activities of others, since career money launderers often work in conjunction with, or complement other criminal industries.

• Incentive to provide Substantial Assistance to law enforcement: Since parole was effectively abolished in 1987, offenders must serve 85% of their sentences, (which are often long) and then be supervised for three to five years after release. All this is a major incentive to seek to reduce their sentences through assisting law enforcement in a way which results in a reduction of their sentence by the court. By making the period of incarceration as bleak as possible, especially through consistent reminders that the inmate is in custody, they drive him towards cooperation as a means of reducing the time of incarceration.

The corrections counselor went through a number of questions with me, all of which quickly confirmed to me my original estimate that most of my fellow inmates at this minimum security prison were either in there for minor white-collar offences, or were convicted of drug crimes, and had drawn short sentences by testifying against their associates in court, or given damaging evidence against some other unlucky individuals, causing them to be arrested. The questioning seemed to focus upon whether I had done so (I had not), and whether I feared for my safety. (I did not).

At the conclusion of the interview, I was escorted onto the grounds of the prison, which looked like most institutional housing, barracks-style, that I knew well from my military service. The difference that day was, whilst I was being taken to my housing area, a fight broke out amongst two inmates. My escort didn't miss a step, he let some of the correctional officers handcuff those responsible, and they led them away to the lockup.

The housing unit was much better than those I remembered from the army, and especially in my primitive quarters in Vietnam. I was to be on the top of a two-man bunk bed, and my blanket was a reassuring olive drab. As one might expect, there was no privacy whatsoever, just an open room for sixty or so inmates.

Since this was a minimum security institution, there were no bars, no locks, and no barbed-wire fence  , just a line painted around the outer limits of the prison camp. To cross that line  was forbidden, and to do so would generally constitute escape, a nice little Federal crime that is worth five years' of your freedom.

I was admonished not to stray too far from my bunk, as there would shortly be a head-count. In a minimum-security facility without fences, since they cannot guarantee you will be there, they count the population several times a day. That's how they know whether anyone has run off, meaning escaped.

How I felt at that moment is hard to describe; perhaps the word lost comes close. I knew, barring any unforeseen circumstance, I would be safe there, but coming from a professional world, being a lawyer, and now having sunk to the very bottom level of existence, the impact, even shock, of the moment was powerful.

However, having been in tough places before, everything being relative, it could have been much worse; I could be serving 25 years to life, had I chosen to defend myself in court. The storm clouds of the first Gulf War were gathering, and at least I wasn't in the Middle East, wearing a green uniform, that day.

Then, the inmate work-day ended, and my new roommates came in. It was no surprise to me that I recognised some of them, and other I knew personally from the Miami narcotics trafficking scene. And some were clients. And so it began.

Next Week: The prison routine; boring, frustrating and aimless.