Elizabeth Holmes, the former billionaire entrepreneur, reports to prison. Here’s what life is like at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with current events and trending topics. You’re learning English—this is what I like to say—so you should also learn about the English-speaking world. And hopefully this is a part of the world that you’ll never experience. But today, we’ll talk about what it’s going to be like for Elizabeth Holmes. She reported to prison on May 30 and she’ll spend at least the first part of her sentence at a minimum-security federal prison.
In the second half of today’s lesson, I’ll show you how to use the English expression “serve time.” And we have a quote of the week.
This is lesson 582 of Plain English, so you can find the transcript and full lesson resources at PlainEnglish.com/582. Let’s get going.
Elizabeth Holmes reports to prison: here’s what it’s like
The Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, is a minimum-security prison. From the outside, it doesn’t look like a prison, with guard towers and lots of barbed wire. The lawn is well-manicured. There are mature trees and elegant signs. There’s fencing, and some barbed wire, but not a lot. It’s 95 miles from Houston, Texas.
The prison holds about 600 non-violent female offenders who have been convicted of federal crimes. In the U.S., violent crimes and property crimes are typically state crimes: you go to a state court and if convicted you serve in a state prison. Federal crimes are about national issues, things like drug trafficking, money laundering, terrorism, financial crimes, and fraud.
Jen Shah, who starred on the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, is incarcerated at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan; she is serving a sentence for telemarketing fraud. One of the rich parents convicted in the university admissions scandal served time there, too.
And on May 30, the prison camp got its newest inmate: Elizabeth Holmes. You heard about her in Lesson 446. She was a billionaire at age 30, the richest self-made woman, according to some estimates. She was on the cover of Forbes and Fortune magazines; she appeared on stage with Bill Clinton at a conference.
A former secretary of state was on the board of directors of her company. Theranos, her company, promised accurate blood tests from just a single small drop of blood. If it had been true, it would have been revolutionary. But it was all a fraud : her blood tests didn’t work. She was convicted of criminal fraud and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Holmes is appealing her conviction. But it looks likely that she’ll spend the next decade in the federal prison in Bryan, Texas. So what is life like there?
Inmates live in dormitory-style rooms. They sleep four to a room. There are no doors to the rooms, so there’s little privacy. There are two sets of bunk beds, each with a thin mattress. Each room has a table and four folding chairs; the chairs must be folded up against the wall when they’re not being used. Inmates are allowed to have only limited personal possessions—whatever can fit under their beds, in their lockers, or on a small table.
Inmates must wear government-issued clothing for the whole time they are incarcerated. The clothes they wear when they arrive are mailed back to their families. They get standard-issue sheets, blankets, pillows, and towels. The prison provides basics like soap and toothpaste. But if inmates want brand-name toiletries, they have to buy them from the Commissary.
The Commissary is the prison store. There, inmates can buy toiletries, food, coffee, cosmetics, office supplies, and other similar items. Inmates are not allowed to handle cash, but they have an electronic account with the prison. Relatives can deposit small amounts of money into the inmate’s account, but inmates can’t spend more than $360 per month. Inmates also make money from working—twelve cents per hour, up to about forty cents per hour.
All inmates are assigned work duties. Every new inmate does a rotation in food service, which is considered the hardest job. That shift starts at 4:30 a.m. After a minimum of 90 days in food service, inmates may be transferred to other job assignments. Inmates work in the laundry, barbershop, library, and chapel. Others are teachers, landscapers, janitors, or clerks in the commissary. The most coveted jobs are in the factories—the U.S. prison system runs its own factories on inmate labor. There, an inmate can make up to $1.15 per hour.
When not working, inmates can take classes, attend religious services, exercise, read books from the library, watch TV, do legal research, and receive visitors. There are strict visiting hours: weekends and holidays only. There’s a video system that allows inmates to have a 25-minute video visit for $6.00 per visit .
Inmates don’t have access to the internet. However, they have a limited e-mail system that allows them to send text-only electronic messages to approved contacts. Phone calls are limited to 15 minutes and are monitored by staff.
Inmates have some general freedom of movement in the facility when they are not working and when they are not required to be in their rooms. However, life is highly regimented. There are two official counts, in which inmates must be standing by their beds each day: at 4:05 p.m. and at 10:00 p.m. There’s a general wakeup call at 6:00 a.m. every day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are at standard times: 6:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., and 4:30 p.m. Lights go out at 10:30 p.m., or 11:30 p.m. on weekends and holidays.
Compared to a maximum-security prison, this is a relatively relaxed way to serve a sentence. Some people look at the daily regimen and call it “Camp Fed,” like it’s a summer camp. The people who say that have probably never been to a federal prison, nor given it much serious thought.
There may not be the solid cell doors, solitary confinement , and violence of a maximum-security prison. But this is still prison. Elizabeth Holmes has very few rights, she’ll make less than a dollar an hour for her labor, she has no access to the internet, little access to information, and she will see her very young children only during prison visits on weekends or via blurry video calls.
Reading material
Theranos promised to revolutionize blood testing. To get complicated blood tests today, you have to get blood drawn at a hospital or a doctor’s office. But Theranos said with a small finger prick, you could get extensive lab results done.
Actually, no. None of the tests worked. Minor detail, but they didn’t give accurate results. Along the way, Theranos fooled investors, pharmacy chains, customers, celebrities, and most of the business media.
A reporter for The Wall Street Journal, a business newspaper, began to investigate Theranos after being contacted by a whistleblower. The articles in the newspaper led to Theranos’s downfall.
The journalist wrote a book called “Bad Blood” about the fall of Theranos. You can get a copy of “Bad Blood” at bookstores, on Amazon, at your public library, or, depending on where you currently reside, you might even be able borrow a copy from the prison library at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas. Yes, the book about Elizabeth Holmes’s company is available at the library at the prison where she will be serving her sentence.
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