Ghislaine Maxwell's arrival at Texas prison camp sparks tension and restrictions

RNZ News

13 hours ago

By
Katelyn Polantz
, CNN
Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking minors following a trial in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Photo:
AFP / Getty Images
Ghislaine Maxwell's
arrival to the federal prison camp in Bryan
, Texas, this month has sent a shot of tension across its minimum-security all-female units, even while her lawyer says she's in a safer facility as there is intense political inquiry around Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking ring.
While Maxwell's living conditions will be less restrictive in Bryan, it's still a difficult situation, where the Epstein conspirator won't get all the benefits of an easy or short stay that other inmates might, like access to puppies to train or the ability to leave the facility for work, according to more than a half dozen people familiar with the Bryan prison, the programmes and the inmates there.
The inmates inside Bryan, who are largely non-violent white-collar offenders, were warned recently by prison staff to use discretion talking about Maxwell since she arrived, according to two people who represent inmates in the Bryan prison camp.
"She's not making any friends," Sam Mangel, a prison consultant who works with clients at the prison camp, said to CNN this week. "Radioactive."
The relaxed nature of the camp became more tense when Maxwell arrived, which is typical of high-profile inmates on the inside, Mangel said.
"Nobody's going to rock the boat there. They want to serve the remainder of their sentences with whatever modicum of comfort Bryan provides," he added about other inmates.
The Daily Telegraph wrote last week that a prisoner at Bryan said she was "disgusted" by Maxwell's transfer there, in a comment provided to the publication through the inmate's husband. Since that comment was published, prison officials pulled that inmate, Julie Howell, out of a puppy-training class in the camp then transferred her out of the facility, according to her lawyer. Howell is now at a federal detention center in Houston, the lawyer and Bureau of Prisons records say.
"Nobody's going to say anything about Ghislaine Maxwell now, are you kidding?" Howell's lawyer Patrick McLain said to CNN on Thursday.
Two inmates who were released from FPC Bryan in the past year haven't heard anything yet on how Maxwell is faring inside, or even which of the three units in the camp she is housed in.
One of the recently released inmates, Jill Ford, told CNN she would have been concerned with Maxwell's presence there around visitation time. Many of the women inside the prison have children who visit them frequently, where the families are also able to be seen by other inmates in the visitation rooms. It's not known what level of visitation ability Maxwell has.
Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking minors following a trial in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison, with a release date set for 12 years from now, according to federal prison and court records.
This undated trial evidence image shows British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and US financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Photo:
AFP / US District Court for the southern district of New York
The infamous Epstein conspirator's transfer from a more restrictive prison in Florida to the prison camp in Texas also continues to raise questions this week around the Justice Department's reasons for her move and the treatment she may receive inside her new home.
On Thursday, Maxwell's attorney David O Markus offered a reason: The transfer happened because Maxwell needed a "safer placement," according to a post he wrote on X.
"I'm surprised to hear my progressive friends criticizing more humane prisons and Ghislaine's transfer to a safer facility, especially after she faced serious danger in Tallahassee," he wrote. "The outrage machine wants to turn a safer placement into a scandal."
Maxwell would have been housed potentially around women convicted of violent crime in the low-security Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, where she was until earlier this month, according to people familiar with the BOP system. While the prison camp in Bryan is an even less-secure facility, designated as minimum-security by BOP, it houses non-violent offenders who largely have committed only white-collar federal crimes.
It is highly unusual for a person convicted of a sex crime to be transferred to a federal prison camp, where women convicted of non-violent white-collar crime are able to move about relatively freely inside and bunk together in dormitory-style rooms. It's also usually not allowed for an inmate with as many years as Maxwell still had left on her sentence - more than 10 - to be allowed in a prison camp.
Maxwell's attorney Markus declined to provide any additional information to CNN.
Spokespeople from the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons haven't responded to multiple requests for comment this week.
The unusual nature of Maxwell's transfer, coming after she spoke to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche for two days following a proffer agreement, has also caught the attention of Capitol Hill.
Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has requested more information from the Bureau of Prisons about her transfer and internal BOP designations. A spokesperson for Whitehouse said he hasn't received any new information as of Thursday (local time).
Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Audrey Strauss, announces charges against Ghislaine Maxwell at a media conference in July 2020.
Photo:
AFP
But just because Maxwell now has some of these lower designations doesn't mean she'll get full access to what the camp at Bryan has to offer. Some of the programmes inmates want to participate in may not take her.
For instance, the work release programme at the Bryan prison camp trains certified nursing assistants, according to several people familiar with the prison camp. The program is run by the Southern Careers Institute, an education company that screens applicants from the prison and won't allow inmates with certain charges to take part in the programme if they apply, a person familiar with the program told CNN.
Canine Companions, which places puppies in federal prisons for inmates to train as service dogs, explicitly said it wouldn't allow Maxwell into the puppy programme at the prison camp.
Currently, there are seven puppies (Names: Kianda, Lisa VII, Louise V, Mavis IV, Hector VII, Gator V) paired with a total of 15 inmate handlers at FPC Bryan. The inmates keep the dogs with them from eight weeks to 17 months, teaching the puppies their first 20 or so tasks to use in service of people with disabilities, and the inmates groom, exercise and socialise the puppies inside the prison.
Maxwell hasn't applied to the programme. But if she were to, the puppy programme wouldn't accept her.
"We do not allow anyone who has committed crimes against animals or minors. That's because they're vulnerable populations," Paige Mazzoni, Canine Companions' CEO, told CNN. "The goal is to give the puppies love and enough confidence to continue to learn tasks."
Two other high-profile inmates at FPC Bryan, Elizabeth Holmes the former CEO of Theranos and Jennifer Shah of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, aren't part of the puppy programme, either, Mazzoni said.
- CNN