White Collar Cons Say Goodbye to Club Fed

July 1 -- It may be inside-trader Sam Waksal's first choice to while away the next seven years — but it's not exactly Club Fed anymore.

Instead of fences, guard towers and barbed wire, Federal Prison Camp Eglin in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., is ringed only by wide-open spaces, old oak trees hung with Spanish moss and a yellow boundary line painted on the ground.

But long gone are the days when inmates at Camp Eglin dressed in regular clothes and easily won parole after enjoying the taxpayer-funded tennis courts and swimming pools.

"It really hasn't been for some time," said David Novak, who spent nearly a year at Eglin in 1997 after pleading guilty to mail fraud and falsely reporting a plane crash. " 'Club Fed' is kind of an urban legend at this point."

Tennis courts and swimming pools have been removed, as they have from almost all federal prisons, and while there is still a golf course at nearby Eglin Air Force Base, inmates rarely step foot on it — and when they do, it's to maintain it, never to play it themselves.

Prisoners at Eglin now wear a khaki uniform with their ID number ironed on their breast pocket. One of the most difficult things, Novak said, is that phone time has been reduced to 300 minutes a month.

That means the white-collar criminals, who are more often family men than other criminals, have only five hours to keep up ties with their loved ones.

Inmates at Eglin once enjoyed frequent furloughs, but experts who advise white-collar criminals on their prison experience now often tell their clients not to expect their wives to be there when they get out.

It's Tougher All Over

The changes at the old Club Fed reflect a general toughening of the treatment of all kinds of convicts in the federal system.

The government has also stiffened sentences for white-collar criminals. Mandatory guidelines established in 1987 mean sentences are longer, and convicts have fewer chances to get out early.

Federal parole has been abolished and the possible reduction for good behavior has been minimized.