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White Collar Support Group™ Blog: White Collar Prison (Part Three), by John Dimenna

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John DiMenna is a member of our White Collar Support Group™ that meets every Monday evening on Zoom.

White-Collar Prison. An Essay By John DiMenna. Originally Published at Minutes Before Six. Reprinted With Permission.

A Different Kind of Hell.

You can survive prison, and you can recover from prison, but prison never leaves you. On certain days, it feels like afterlife; other days, like a typical workday, and most days a bad dream enduring the slow torture of meaningless, menial tasks. I lived among one hundred other inmates, more wilderness than community. There is nothing more solitary than living among the exiled.

The recreation area was decaying like the camp’s interior. There was a cinder track, an overgrown grass field in the middle and a baseball field that was a fallow wreck of dirt. A volleyball area, handball court, bocci and horseshoes completed the area. All in comparable disrepair. A workout trailer adjacent housed two treadmills and an aerobic machine, vintage 1955. Barbells are not allowed in federal prisons to protect the staff. Not from the equipment but the potential to develop inmates who could overpower the COs (correction officers.) The track was reduced to a crumbling path of ash and mud but remained every inmate’s daily prayer. In any weather, solo, in pairs, in groups even, running, walking (most popular), guys in the dog program walking their dogs (there was a dog training program), picking up their poop along the way, and every once in a while, one inmate was walking with a guitar, playing and composing while he walked.

There was some basketball play. But less than I thought it would be. The court was not bad. No one very good. Sometimes, twenty or more back and forth before a basket. It looked like form over substance. Baseball the same. Except the Spanish guys liked to challenge a team of ‘others.’ Neither side very good. Balls through the wickets, ground ball home runs, outfielders dashing in and out, plenty of arguments and shouting. Bocci had a following, horseshoes too. Same guys at handball. No one very good there either. Hardwood picnic tables were interspersed, dented, and damaged that guys used to exercise on pushups, sit-ups, and the like. Some creative moves I couldn’t figure out. In the early days, I walked the track with a friend. But after his release, I walked alone, talking to myself, with only my radio playing classical music. There was a native American area. A teepee and all. Always some fires burning there. Inmates regarded it as bull shit. Inmates were there mainly to sneak a smoke. A rag-tag fence of fragile planks surrounded the teepee. A sign in front: “Only Native Americans allowed.” No one there ever looked like an Indian.

There were many lines at the camp. The meal lines, the shower lines, the pill lines, and the most important lines, the ones not to cross. But the lines blurred often, especially in the mess hall, designed for seventy-two inmates but servicing one hundred and twenty-eight. Seats were currency, and inmates bequeathed them upon release. It took me two weeks to finally find a seat. In the summer, we could sit on picnic tables outside in the visitor’s area. No seating there. It was okay to poach. The tables and seats in the mess hall were institutional and minimalist. They looked like something designed for an elementary school dining hall. Oval-shaped tables with stools attached. You sat shoulder to shoulder, knees squeezed against the bottom of the table. You had to be careful not to nudge the guy next to you.

There were lines at every meal. It was best not to cut in. Some tried, but rarely, usually a new inmate. It was never a good outcome. You took your tray and then waited again for cutlery (plastic) and water. Then, a straight line to your seat. You had to eat quickly, stuff it down, carry your tray, dump the refuse in the garbage, put the tray on the counter, put the plastic cutlery in the pan with the water, put your cup in the holder, put an apple or banana in your pants if the CO was back in his office and exit.

Prison camps are working camps. Everyone’s assigned a job. No great options: orderly, maintenance, the kitchen, landscaping, the commissary, the power house and the military base. Otherwise, there’s dog training and education. Dog training is popular because the trainers live in a larger bunk with only their pet as a bunkmate. But it has its downside: walking at five in the morning, just before lights out at 10:00 pm, and in any weather. There’s only one slot for education, and it’s like teaching high school in a second language, maybe a third language. I chose the kitchen; I sort of chose it. The Camp Counselor, Mr. Larkin, said they were short kitchen workers at orientation. He was mid-forties, had a huge gut and a continual Cheshire cat grin. His low-keyed persona effused a disinterest in all things other than leaving on time and inmate’s restitution payments (court-ordered fines), of which he was inflexible.

Hoping for a favorable first impression, I volunteered. Myself, Dr Death— an Asian GP from Connecticut, in for prescription drug violations—and Harry the alchie—a roofer in for tax evasion—were the other new guys. Three jobs were open: two table washers (the preferred ones) and one dishwasher. The Corrections Officer (CO) in charge of the kitchen, a black former Marine, a no-nonsense guy with something reassuring about him, said we should decide among ourselves. Dr. Death said he had a bad back, and Harry said he had seniority, so I was the dishwasher. I learned to do the washing, the loading, and even operating the long stainless steel washing machine, a frightening apparatus that had to be reassembled every morning and rumored to have taken limbs from prior inmates. By the time I was released, I was the Number one dishwasher. Guys used to kid me. “DiMenna, you can always get a job now when you’re out.” Such a distinction. Actually, I was proud of it. I even got to like it. Something about the tactile there. Can’t explain it. Sometimes, I think it saved me.

White Collar Prison (Part One): https://www.grantlaw.com/white-collar-prison-part-one-by-john-dimenna/

White Collar Prison (Part Two): https://www.grantlaw.com/white-collar-prison-part-two-by-john-dimenna/

We highly recommend Brent Cassity’s podcast, Nightmare Success, in which he interviews justice-impacted people from all walks of life. He is a White Collar Support Group member with a mission to be of service to our community. Please check it out on Spotify at or on your favorite podcast platform.

Sponsored by Progressive Prison Ministries/White Collar Support Group™. Start Here™. https://prisonist.org

Sponsored by GrantLaw, PLLC: https://grantlaw.com

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White Collar Prison, Part Two, by John Dimenna

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John DiMenna is a member of the Ministry’s White Collar Support Group™ that meets every Monday evening on Zoom. Start Here™

White-Collar Prison. An Essay By John DiMenna. Originally Published at Minutes Before Six. Reprinted With Permission.

A Different Kind of Hell.

You can survive prison, and you can recover from prison, but prison never leaves you. On certain days, it feels like afterlife; other days, like a typical workday, and most days a bad dream enduring the slow torture of meaningless, menial tasks. I lived among one hundred other inmates, more wilderness than community. There is nothing more solitary than living among the exiled.

The camp was only a short distance from the main prison, a regional medical prison that treated criminals of all ages and crimes. Many of them were elderly and critically ill, and many died there. Inmates of the camp who violated camp protocols were relocated to the main prison, a frightening prospect that fostered good behavior at the camp. Relocations to the main prison often resulted in time in the SHU (special housing unit, pronounced Shoe), essentially solitary confinement in dungeon-like conditions. Many inmates who were relocated there never returned to the camp, and their period of release was often delayed.

The camp facility comprised a low-lying industrial building resembling a giant storage shed and a crumbling recreation area adjacent. It was situated in the middle of a former golf course. The golf course was an amenity for the servicemen at the military base. Remnants of fairways and cutouts of greens were visible from the recreation area. Tall pine trees surrounded the camp’s perimeter, but through them, the main prison was visible, separated by a sunken area of shrubs, old fairways from the golf course and a narrow brook that was probably a water hazard for golfers.

It was a long building of concrete block, no windows and three tiers of barbed wire. The gnarled circles flashed their steel teeth day and night, more frightening in the night light, its true fierceness revealed. In daylight, the barbed wire disappears into the background. But in the early evening, when the lights came on, those circles flashed bright, their shiny, unmistakable message that you were a prisoner. We’re here to hurt you, and you’re not getting out. A vast parking lot beside the building was acres of black pavement. The steel glint from hundreds of parked cars flashed its own message, the depth of staff there and its overwhelming numbers to preserve our confinement.

The camp building was initially constructed to house seventy-two inmates, but by the time I arrived, it housed one hundred and twenty-eight, all cramped into tiny cubicles in an open-floor environment of approximately ten thousand square feet. Decay was pervasive there. Mold in the showers, broken urinals and sinks, frayed sheets, stained blankets, dented lockers, a foul smell in the bathrooms and a mossy film everywhere. The dorm for inmates was a maze of dark corridors and cubicles that was more barracks than dorm. From a bird’s eye view, it resembled an experiment for mice. Fluorescent lights hung from exposed steel beams and iron pipes, some bulbs always missing or flashing. The pods were eight by seven feet, six feet high and had no privacy.

Each cubicle housed two inmates with a bunk bed, two low-lying lockers, two plastic chairs and a narrow drawer that fit under the bunks. Every surface was hard: cinder block walls, plastic chairs, steel beds and concrete floors. Windows that surprisingly opened lined the perimeter. But more of a curse than a benefit and a source of conflict in the winter months. A series of fans hung on the interior walls in no particular configuration. They were turned on day and night in every season. In winter, they shaded the sound of illegal cell phones. In the summer, they were a source of conflict: “Fan-wars,” named by the inmates to describe the battles to determine the direction of the fans during the oppressive days of summer. There was no Air Conditioning. Some inmates couldn’t sleep without that noise, and others complained bitterly. I slept regardless. In prison, sleep was the only balm.

I arrived late fall, temperatures falling, days shorter and the dorm freezing. In those late-fall mornings, the darkest season, inmates silently stumbled through dark corridors. I never thought that Hell would be freezing, not fire but ice, the torture of preference for the BOP. I slept in overcoats and winter hats, shivering for hours, tossing and turning my way to warmth and eventual sleep. But just when I’d managed to somehow find sleep, there was the three am count and the guard’s flashlight in my bunk and then another hour to try and morph shaking into sleep and then the alarm would go off at five am, and it was morning and time to get up in the meat locker.

I’d ask the guard about the heat, and he’d tell me to “Fuck off because all you guys are a pain in the ass. Who’s hot, who’s cold.” And then I’d go to work in the kitchen washing dishes and scrubbing pans, but at least it was warm for five hours. I’d finish up and return to my bunk exhausted, but still cold, colder even, and ten minutes later I’d be shivering again. A different kind of Hell.

An area for games, not separate from the dorm area, was situated in the front of the dorm. There were four plastic tables and a tall, broken gray locker with boards for chess and checkers, playing cards and some other games I never saw anyone play. Inmates had to bring the chairs from their bunks to the tables. On evenings and stormy days, the area was crowded, loud and primed for conflict. It was a noisy place at night. There was a lot of shouting, arguing, and laughing, but mostly shouting. My bunk was next to that room during my first weeks in camp. A black inmate named Outlaw (his real name) played poker every night and fought with somebody every night. Seemed like he would jump up at the end of every hand, throw down his cards and “Mother fuck” everyone in the room. And he was loud and scary. He was gone early after I arrived. Guys told me he wasn’t a bad guy. Glad I never had to find out.

We highly recommend Brent Cassity’s podcast, Nightmare Success, in which he interviews justice-impacted people from all walks of life. He is a White Collar Support Group member with a mission to be of service to our community. Please check it out on Spotify at or on your favorite podcast platform.

White Collar Prison, Part One by John Dimenna

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White-Collar Prison. An Essay By John DiMenna. Originally Published at Minutes Before Six. Reprinted With Permission.

John DiMenna is a member of the Ministry’s White Collar Support Group™ that meets every Monday evening on Zoom. Start Here™

A Different Kind of Hell.

You can survive prison, and you can recover from prison, but prison never leaves you. On certain days, it feels like afterlife; other days, like a typical workday, and most days a bad dream enduring the slow torture of meaningless, menial tasks. I lived among one hundred other inmates, more wilderness than community. There is nothing more solitary than living among the exiled.

In a crowded courtroom, the presiding Judge—a round Black man with a kind face—asked us to stand. Something deliberative about him, like an uncle you could confide in after failing an exam. Though momentarily reassured, my legs trembled as a group of investors stood behind me, silently pleading for the maximum sentence. Before sentencing, the Judge delivered a long narrative that was difficult to hear, the acoustics compromised by a high ceiling and a dizzying scent from the rich paneled wood that covered the walls. I could only grasp certain phrases and the last few sentences before he announced his decision.

He told me I had “already sentenced myself to a prison without bars,” something about a “prison of my own making,” and that I was not connected to humanity, “disconnected to what makes life meaningful and worthwhile.” Then, after a short pause, he sentenced me to eighty-five months in prison for two counts of wire fraud. He said I had a challenging life ahead. I was seventy-six years old. With eighty-five months of incarceration looming, my life was over.

I left the courtroom in disgrace, leaving my family, company, and investors in financial ruin, the disconnect from humanity complete. I was assigned to a prison camp in a remote area north of Boston, FMC Devens, a former military base where the Spanish Flu began. My pre-prison research advised me to make friends slowly, live under the radar and become a ghost to the staff. A muddled brotherhood was waiting for me.

Federal prison camps represent the lowest level of security in the Bureau of Prison’s system. Camp facilities are not like traditional prisons. There are no cells or bars or perimeter walls to climb. They are more like military barracks where inmates reside in a dormitory. Residents there are primarily non-violent offenders and others who have earned a place there based on good behavior at higher security institutions. Most were close to their release date and motivated not to cause trouble. It was a diverse group of inmates, including drug dealers, gang members, violent offenders, and white-collar criminals.

The Bureau of Prisons— BOP in inmate parlance—is the federal agency that manages the entire federal prison system and the community of criminals who have violated federal laws. Its’ mission is purportedly to protect the community and reclaim the criminal citizenry—the measure of its viability as a social institution. Unfortunately, like most bureaucracies, its primary mission has become its own preservation.

For inmates, the BOP is an all-encompassing amalgam of every oppressive institution that has confronted them during their lifetimes, whether familial, academic, religious, or governmental authority. And for many, its authority extended to their funeral and burial. At Devens, the cemetery for departed inmates lay next to the camp’s recreation area, perfect rows of pure white crosses.

An eerie tableau and a portent of things to come..

We highly recommend Brent Cassity’s podcast, Nightmare Success, in which he interviews justice-impacted people from all walks of life. He is a White Collar Support Group member with a mission to be of service to our community. Please check it out on Spotify at or on your favorite podcast platform.

“Arresting.” A Collection of Prose Poems by John Dimenna

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John Dimenna is a member of our White Collar Support Group that meets on Zoom on Monday evenings.

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INTRODUCTION
           
            You can survive prison, you can recover from prison, but prison never leaves you. I lived among one hundred other inmates. More wilderness than community. There is nothing more solitary than living among the exiled. I entered prison as a ghost and returned an apparition.  
 
HOMECOMING
 
I’ve moved on from the sentiment described herein. But my goal was to capture the reality confronting  felons upon their release and the failure of the prison system to prepare inmates for reentry.
 
            The moment of release is a kind of fool’s gold. A conviction to make amends, start over, re-build a life . But returning home from prison, the relief fades sooner than you’d think. The old failures still reside there, and prison makes the trip home with you.. The experience of incarceration: its agony, sense of exile, isolation and the misery of day-to-day confinement lingers long after the arrival home.  Even in the relatively low-security environment of a federal prison camp, confinement becomes an internal form of torture, no matter its locale or facility.
            The presiding judge told me that I already sentenced myself to a prison without bars. Still, a prison nonetheless, a prison of the soul, that I was not connected to humanity, disconnected to what makes life meaningful and worthwhile. He said I had a challenging life ahead, and I must figure out how to release myself from this prison of my own making.  Returning home, I embraced a life of contemplation, renewal and self-reflection. I concluded that my crime was a failure of character, something intrinsic, revealed only under great duress and crisis.
            But no one’s the same as you remembered them. Friends are uncomfortable, distant, measuring and opportunities foreclosed. Ambivalence follows warm greetings. And then there are the questions asked and the more painful ones, not asked, but implied in half measures and stares and pauses, more revealing, hurtful than a thousand insults. You try to put on a good face, show courage, believe it yourself for a while. But it doesn’t last, resonate. You’re damaged goods because prison doesn’t prepare you. All the stuff on the bulletin boards, the courses, seminars: resume building, reentry strategies, interview preparedness, family orientation, all bull-shit. Every inmate leaves with only a T-shirt, a new pair of jeans, a pair of sneakers, a felony conviction and maybe $200 from his prison-store account. The excruciating self-loathing, a permanent consequence.
            I had hoped that release from incarceration would provide a spiritual balm and the seeds for growth. How I wish there was one. But very little of that, like planting seeds on concrete, and failure the only real prism from which to measure. Then I tried to focus on the turning points; but it’s always a moving target and too many of those to count or measure. There just isn’t a path to go back or go forward. I huddle in a cocoon and harbor the simplest entreaties and memories of my past that promise an epiphany, but it never reveals itself, and I remain exiled in relentless remorse and turning points that passed.
            In the end, there’s really no going back. Sometimes I don’t think I’ve changed at all. No matter how many times I run my life’s reel, the ending is always the same, and so is the beginning.  No escape yet from the “prison of my own making, the prison without bars, the prison of the soul.” Only the dark corridors of incarceration I thought I’d left behind.
 

HELL FREEZES OVER
 
The prison camp was a maze of dark corridors and in the winter mornings, the darkest season, we stumbled  through them in silence and more than any other time, the long days loomed. I arrived late fall, temperatures falling, days shorter and the dorm freezing but I never thought that Hell would be freezing, not fire but ice the torture of preference for the Bureau of Prisons. We slept in overcoats and winter hats and shivering for hours tossing and turning our way to warmth and just when I managed to somehow find sleep there was the three AM count and the guards flashlight in my face and then another hour to try and morph my shaking into sleep and then the alarm would go off at Five AM and it was morning and time to get up in the meat locker and I’d ask the guard about the heat and he told me to “fuck off because all you guys are a pain in the ass─whose hot whose cold─” and then I’d go to work in the kitchen washing dishes and scrubbing pans but at least it’s warm for five hours and I’d finish up and go back to my bunk exhausted but still cold, colder even and ten minutes later I’d be shivering again. A different kind of hell.
 
 
PRISONERS LAMENT
 
After anguished farewells, the door closed behind me. I was given a uniform, like an invisible swaddling cloak, a sense of prey and predator lurking like creatures in the canyons
of the seabed and it’s mysterious leagues. There were no mornings, only dreaded waking,
a grim seizure of place and confinement, sleep no measure of solace, the prospect of
turmoil and dreams that always find their breath. Over time yearning and longing found their way to cruel memory and false hope and the sad delirium of counting days.
 
 
TAKING STOCK
 
I was born in a sanitarium in New York City but my mother said that was not what you think but I don’t know what I thought except sanitariums are not nice places and my mother said that it wasn’t true that I was born in New York City or in a sanitarium and that I was born in Mount Vernon where I grew up and that was always what my mother did which was always reassuring me because nothing was ever really what it seemed, at least when it came to me and when my sister told me by mistake one day that I had seizures when I was a little boy, my mother put a hand over her mouth and told me that it wasn’t true and what does this have to do with me now sitting here in prison at age seventy-seven and I don’t have the answer except that I’m trying to take stock of everything and this is where I started or where I’m ending or maybe it’s just another new beginning because I love new beginnings and I’ve compiled them my whole life but I have a blind spot for the end of things and my father told me that’s why I keep walking into mud or maybe I haven’t a clue as if there are any clues, despite we spend our lives looking for clues and reasons when there are probably no reasons as we just do our best to manage the turmoil of our lives because there are no ordinary lives, certainly not mine but I’m just starting to take stock because that’s what you do in prison and maybe I’ll find some clues.
 
 
GRANDDAUGHTERS VISIT
 
She arrived, even in this tangled prison, her beguiling innocence still intact. With her parents in tow, she kipped out of the car, everything fair and starlight, the magic of everyday life that only seven-year old’s possess. Still not aware of her own beauty, nor the world hers, we shared like always, not a hint of place. “Do you know I love you,” I said. “You always say that Papa,” and smiled. Three missing teeth, that rare beauty of absence in a childs smile and stories of the tooth fairy. But on goodbye, she paused and finally grasped the scene, all these men in garbs of green. In the softest of words, as if only we could hear, “Is it hard?” she asked. I wanted to say yes but didn’t. Enough perfection and innocence to burn a shameful hole right through you. But a final wave from that perfect face of petals and smiles even I couldn’t spoil.

BURY ME─PLEASE

I told my brother that I want to be buried because he would understand that and not that I know what he will do because he doesn’t like to talk about those things and also because his wife was cremated and wanted her ashes spread over somewhere which I can’t remember now but he never did it anyway and not like my wife who wants her ashes spread over the little river near our first house on a beautiful pristine hill before we knew anything about what we were facing as it was the beginning of our lives really but of course we weren’t aware of it as you never are when you’re young marrieds and the last thing you’re thinking about is how you want to be buried but I don’t want to be ashes and spread anywhere because I want to be put in a box and know the weight of me will be felt by some unknowns who struggle lowering me down and it doesn’t matter that they don’t know me but only that they know that there’s somebody in there that was alive once and I take comfort knowing that but just don’t make me ashes and spread me anywhere because no matter where you spread them it’s really nowhere and I was here once and at least I’ll know that there’s a place that says I was here no matter what I was or wasn’t.

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A former real estate developer, John Dimenna was sentenced to eighty-five months in prison for two counts of wire fraud in 2016, at the age of 76. Fortunately, he received a reprieve after eighteen months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was re=sentenced to serve three years of home incarceration until May 2023. He currently reside in Vero Beach, Florida, with hisy wife of fifty years and writes full time. John Can be reached at dimennajohn@gmail.com.