Plaxico
Burress couldn't wriggle out of jail time for accidentally shooting himself in
the leg with an unlicensed handgun in a New York City nightclub last November.
But the former New York Giants wide receiver's personal fortune will help him
on one score. Burress has retained the services of a "prisoner
consultant" to advise him on "what to expect while incarcerated, and
how to use his period of confinement as productively as possible," as his
attorney, Benjamin Brafman, told the New York Post. To get a sense of
what Burress's counseling sessions might be like, TIME caught up with Steven
Oberfest, a personal trainer and martial-arts expert who bills himself as the
industry's creator. The founder of Prison Coach, Oberfest undefined whose background
includes a 15-month stint in a New York prison on racketeering charges undefined has
been preparing wealthy convicts for their incarceration since 2002. He talked
to TIME about the business of prison prep and the dos and don'ts of inmate
etiquette.
How did you get into the
business?
I was training clients in physical defense, and one of them mentioned she knew
a socialite who did something stupid and had to go to prison. She didn't know
anything about it, and she was scared. She wanted to prepare for it, to learn
how to defend herself.
A light came on in my
head. I've been incarcerated and this experience, [coupled] with the physical
element, sparked me to think about what it would take to help someone who had
never experienced violence transfer into a whole new society. Many of these
guys are fat cats who never had to worry about anything. They really have to
adapt quickly, because there are so many people to piss off and so many things
you can do wrong. If you wind up doing something on the "No" list, it
can make your time undefined whether it's 16 months or 60 months.
How many people have you counseled?
Right now we counsel four to six people a month. These can range from a
100-hour course for $20,000 to $100-an-hour phone consultations or $150-an-hour
webinars.
How many prison consultants are there?
New guys pop up all the time. But I'd say there are three to five who do it
right and have been in the ballgame for years.
So what's the first thing you do with
clients?
First I want to find out what their life is like. I want to know about their
personality, whether they have any addictions to gambling, sex, drugs,
cigarettes. The goal is to get someone to go in addiction-free, where they
don't need anything from anybody. You don't want to put yourself in debt.
The other thing is basic prison etiquette. A lot of
people don't know how to be respectful undefined period. They're cocky and they walk
around with a chip on their shoulder. Now they don't even have a name; they
have a number. They have to follow rules. And they have to make sure they don't
do stupid things.
Like what?
Like locking eyes with inmates, looking into other people's cells, bunks or
lockers. There are simple things, like where you sit when you go for chow. You
need to sit with your own race, or your own kind. You can be a white dude
without any racist issues at all, but if you sit down at a table with five
African Americans, you have the potential to really piss them off undefined and at the
same time, white guys will wonder why you're not sitting with them. If you start
talking to a correctional officer, people are going to start labeling you as a
rat, even if you are just asking an innocent question. They won't look at you
as one of them. They'll look at you as a threat.
You want to be invisible. You need to mind your own
business. While you're incarcerated, the only thing you have is respect. If you
disrespect someone, you'll pay a price for it.
Popular culture and movies would have you
believe that to survive in prison, you're supposed to pick a fight right away.
That's just movies. You don't want to pick a fight with anyone. If you follow
directions, you can go in and come out with no problems whatsoever. I'm
thinking of a guy who was well known and came out with no problems, and he was
5 ft. 2 in., 130 lb. If you start being a whiny bitch, people will take
advantage of it. You start crying about your sentence and your innocence;
people are going to make fun of you.
If you were counseling someone with a lot of
media exposure, like Burress or Bernie Madoff [who also employed a prison
consultant], what would you tell them?
If you're being followed in the media, well, these correctional facilities have
TVs. Once they find out where you're going, they're waiting for you. You're
going to be scrutinized by everyone. It's like your first day of school. Take
Madoff, for example: there's a bounty on this guy. He's ruined so many lives,
screwed so many people over. If he has no fear, he's more psychotic than I
would've thought
Prison coach Steven Oberfest counsels those who are convicted of
a crime and heading to jail.
Shanks for the
advice: White-collar crooks learn jail survival from ex-con
BY
Rich Schapiro
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
White-collar crooks who swap pinstripes for
prison stripes have one last perk they can buy on the way to the Big House - a
prison coach.
"These guys have never been in a fight
in their lives - they don't know what violence is, and now they're entering a
world where anything can happen," said Steven Oberfest, 41, CEO of the Manhattan-based Prison Coach.
With the busts of Bernie Madoff - who consulted a different prison
coach - and other financial swindlers making daily headlines, Oberfest says
business is booming.
For $200 an hour, he offers a crash course on
surviving life behind bars, teaching mostly wealthy, white-collar criminals
everything from jailhouse etiquette to how to instantly drop an attacker.
"We try to take the fear out of
it," he said.
The mixed martial arts specialist said this
year he's taught more than two dozen rookie convicts how to soften the fall
from a penthouse to the jailhouse.
Oberfest's lessons are born from experience.
Some 13 years ago, he spent three months in a
federal penitentiary in central Pennsylvania after pleading guilty to racketeering
and assault charges.
"That was my nightmare, but it helped me
learn the game," Oberfest said.
The idea to found a company based on helping
others cope with life in a cell came in 2002 - at the height of the Enron scandal - when he
taught self-defense to a prison-bound friend.
His sessions are conducted in his upper East
Side apartment and at a training facility nearby. For those under house arrest,
Oberfest even makes house calls.
He typically opens with a primer on the nuts
and bolts of prison life, demystifying jailhouse routines and things like
commissary.
"If you're confused about something, you
can't go to a correction officer and ask him what's happening because the other
inmates will think you're a snitch," Oberfest said.
He offers up a workout routine suitable for
life in a 6-by-9-foot cell and breaks down common prison lingo. Mental
training, focusing on meditation techniques, comes next, followed by
close-quarter combat lessons.
In the Oberfest school of prison survival,
the ability to instantly stop a burly attacker is essential.
"If someone is able to totally disgrace
you the first day you walk in, that just opens the door for everybody not to
respect you," Oberfest said. "The most important thing is mutual
respect."
Gotham Gigs: A jailhouse rock
Prison coach Oberfest is white-collar criminals' ‘last
stop before hell'
By Cara S. Trager
November 29,
2009 5:59 AM
Photo by Buck
Ennis [+] Enlarge
After the
defense loses the case and before the prison door slams, Steven Oberfest
prepares white-collar criminals for life behind bars.
“I'm their last
stop before hell,” says the 41-year-old prison coach.
Mr. Oberfest
advises clients to kick any addiction: Everything is available in jail, “but it
costs much more.” He instructs them in close-quarters combat, but warns that if
an opponent has both AIDS and a cut lip, “your 18-month sentence could turn
into a death sentence.” A practicing Buddhist, he encourages meditation to blot
out despair.
The New Yorker
learned about coping in prison 15 years ago, when he pleaded guilty to
racketeering and served 15 months. He then became a personal trainer. Mr.
Oberfest spotted a market for jail-house coaches in 2001 when, amid a rash of
high-profile white-collar crimes, a client referred a jailed woman for
self-defense training.
His profession
got a lift with the news that Bernie Madoff was coached before going to the
slammer. Mr. Oberfest won't name names but says his clients, who pay up to
$20,000, include public officials and socialites.
He now proudly
abides by the law: “I drive with both hands on the wheel.”
Madoff among those who've leaned on prison coaches
Photo of Steven Oberfest, the prison coach.
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) Between indictment and incarceration, a
crash course in prison life could be a white-collar criminal’s only
hope in the big house.
"After me, nothing should shock you," said Steven Oberfest, a
prison consultant and director of a Manhattan-based prison consulting
firm,
The Prison Coach.
His firm, and others like it, prepare inmates-in-waiting to cope with the corrections system.
For $200 an hour, the 41-year-old professional fighter teaches more
than two dozen white-collar criminals a year everything from jailhouse
do’s and don’ts to how to defend yourself in a prison fight.
Learning how to act and adapt to a new society are key goals,
according to Oberfest’s website.
"I'm pretty much their last step into hell," Oberfest said to Crimesider. "I will make you break down and cry."
His no-nonsense approach comes from hard-earned experience. A New
York street kid, at age 27 Oberfest spent over a year at a federal
corrections institution in upstate New York after pleading guilty to
racketeering and assault charges.
"Prison helped me learn the game quick." Oberfest said. "It was a mental, physical and spiritual journey for me."
In 2002, the ex-con founded "The Prison Coach," the first prison consulting firm of its kind.
He uses one-on-one workout routines, explains the glossary of
common prison lingo and informs his prison-bound pupils of the
unwritten rules behind bars. But the core of his course teaches
humility, especially how to be less offensive to other inmates.
Photo of Bernard Madoff, also known now as prisoner number 61727-054.
"It’s all about how you walk into that front door," Oberfest said.
"If someone is able to totally disgrace you the first day you walk in,
that opens the door for everybody not to respect you."
Speaking of disgrace, the fallen financier Bernard Madoff,
convicted in what is believed to be the largest Ponzi scheme in
history, arrived this month at a federal prison in North Carolina to
begin serving a 150-year sentence in a cell with two bunk beds, a
toilet and a sink.
“I’m concerned for Madoff. There is so much info about
his wife. His wife’s name. His kids. All this stuff is out there. When
you are in there and around a group of people, they will say things
like, ‘Hey, I hear Ruth is a real hot babe.’ Things like that,” he
said. “It’s like a big poker game. He’s walking in with his cards
showing and everyone else is holding their cards. He definitely goes in
with a disadvantage.”
WSJ on the cases, trends and personalities of interest to the business community.Madoff's Prison Consultant Talks About Inmate No. 61727-054
By Amir Efrati
Yesterday at 11:15 a.m. Bernard Madoff entered a medium security prison (pictured) in Butner, N.C.
We don’t know exactly how Madoff will fill his first days there, but
it will no doubt be a big welcome change from his previous home in
Manhattan for the last seven months, the Metropolitan Correctional
Center.
“He was a in cell for 23 hours a day with four other guys in his
row. He was fed in the cell, he showered in the cell,” Herb Hoelter, a
prison consultant who advised Madoff, told the Law Blog. Butner “is an
improvement. He’ll have recreation, the light of day, regular phone
calls and showers and visitors.”
He called Butner an “appropriate” place for Madoff because it’s
“next door to a medical center. And if at some point during the
incarceration he qualifies for a low security facility, he can be
transferred literally down the road” to a different part of the Butner
complex.
Hoelter also said Mr. Madoff is likely to have at least one friend
to help him adjust to his new life; a number of Hoelter’s clients who
are serving time in Butner are bound to take Mr. Madoff under their
wing. “It’s like a buddy system,” says Mr. Hoelter, who declined to say
which of his clients might be paired with Madoff.
As for how he will be treated by other prisoners, Hoelter says
Madoff’s prison term could be a plus. “The fact that he has a life
sentence and a sentence longer than any other inmate…will give him
credibility with other inmates,” he said.
What kind of advice did he give to Madoff? “It’s a matter of keeping
your space and having respect for other people,” Hoelter said. The key
for inmates like Madoff is to “bring some meaning to your life.” He
said that can be done in many ways, including becoming a GED teacher to
other inmates. “He’s sensitive enough and smart enough,” Hoelter said
of Madoff. “I don’t think anyone who knows him would be surprised that
he will do some good things.” (Hoelter, who started his firm,
Baltimore-based National Center for Institutions and Alternatives, in 1979, previously said he waived his fee for Madoff because his assets were frozen.)
Steven Oberfest, a prison consultant and partner in the firm PrisonCoach.com,
takes a different tack. “[I]t’s a general, nasty, medium-security-type
prison. I couldn’t see him functioning as well there,” Oberfest told
WSJ’s Paul Glader.
He said prisoners will be well-educated about Madoff from media
reports. “All eyes are going to be on him,” he said. He also said
Madoff would need to be careful of inmates who may be paid, by people
Madoff defrauded, to intimidate him in prison. “If you screw someone
over for $100 million, they will find someone on the inside and get
even with you. There are always going to be favors. That’s just the way
it is.”
“I’m concerned for Madoff. There is so much info about his wife. His
wife’s name. His kids. All this stuff is out there. When you are in
there and around a group of people, they will say things like, ‘Hey, I
hear Ruth is a real hot babe.’ Things like that,” he said. “It’s like a
big poker game. He’s walking in with his cards showing and everyone
else is holding their cards. He definitely goes in with a disadvantage.”
For our lawyer-readers out there, we’d like to know what you think.
Have prison consultants helped your clients live a better life in
prison?
