AnnaMercury
A question has been raised about Keith Raniere’s future in prison. And in which prison he might be housed.
Assuming his appeal is unsuccessful and he is not set free, he is set to spend up to the next 99 years with the Bureau of Prisons.
It has been speculated that his recent appearance at Brooklyn Federal Court for his restitution hearing might result in him getting moved out of the comparatively safe USP Tucson prison to a harsher prison – as a sort of retribution for what might be seen as cavalier behavior about the location and existence of the DOS slaves’ collateral, something he claims he has never seen and has no idea of where it is to be found today.
About 100 women gave graphic nude photos and other potentially reputationally damaging material about themselves to various DOS masters. None of it has been returned and Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis has told Raniere he must return it at once to the DOS slaves.
His statement that he knew not where the collateral is may have provoked the ire of the judge and perhaps the DOJ might have chosen to put a little pressure on Raniere for claiming ignorance. First, he was put in solitary – although that may have been for unrelated incident[s]. Though he sits in solitary now and will remain there for another 30 days.
After Raniere completes 60 days in solitary, he might be permitted to return to his unit or he might be transferred to a far less desirable prison.
One prison suggested to punish Raniere in a much harsher manner is USP Beaumont in Texas, a maximum-security facility on the Gulf Coast of Texas about 90 miles from Houston.
There he would join about 1,100 other mostly violent, mostly Mexican felons.
It won’t be fun there. In fact, USP Beaumont is informally known as “Bloody Beaumont” getting its name for the occasional murders that take place there.
At USP Tucson, Raniere lodges with a population of about 70 percent sex offenders, something he himself is designated as being.
In the ruthless world of prisons, Tucson was designed as an oasis for sex offenders so that they would not be targeted for violence and rape. Though it is a maximum-security prison, sex offenders do not stand out for special harassment at Tucson since they form the distinct majority of prisoners there.
In other max security prisons, sex offenders – especially child sex offenders – which Raniere is informally considered to be – are brutally targeted and must remain in solitary confinement or be abused.
A man like Raniere might even be killed in such a place if he ventured outside of solitary. Tucson was one of two safe maximum-security prisons in the very unsafe federal prison system.
If he winds up in Beaumont, it will be more than usually unsafe since not only are normal max security prisons unsafe for child sex offenders, Bloody Beaumont is the worst of the worst – especially for someone like Raniere.
Raniere’s child sex conviction was for a woman named Camila, who was 15 at the time she was abused. According to his conviction records, he was 45 at the time. The problem with Beaumont from Raniere’s standpoint is that most of the prisoners there are Mexican-Americans and Camila is Mexican.
Raniere will have a target a mile wide on his back or backside if he winds up there.
As our readers discuss below, it might be wise for Raniere to avoid this transfer to another facility and if he does know where the collateral is – or he could instruct any of his followers to return it – now is the time for him to be helpful.
Not only for his own good – but also for the 100 women who have to worry about it being released – even accidentally. The return of the collateral might give them some peace of mind and would be a good gesture on Raniere’s part – if he, in fact, does control it. For it cannot possibly do him any good whatsoever where he will be for the next 99 years.
Shivani wrote back to Claviger
Thanks for your thoughts, and I will look into the Beaumont type of environment (etc.) – as it does look like a viable option for Raniere, if indeed he is to be moved from where he is now. Maybe.
The levels of potential violence from a large proportion of an Hispanic, or largely a Latino, imprisoned population appears to me to be a possibly lethal arrangement for Raniere, in particular. For he has messed with plenty of Mexican people especially, and there could be rage directed personally at him, and the strange, yet powerful decisions for wreaking direct vengeance upon him, and he has contributed to putting himself at considerably more risk now.
So this causes me to think a whole lot of conjoining factors over right now, as though two different sorts of big, metaphoric FISTS might be set up to wring Keith Raniere’s neck. And this could become his grand finale, rather than doing 120 years plus his probationary supervision, so to speak.
Raniere might’ve positioned himself to be in more direct danger via his own dysfunctionalities, and the prison system has the authorization, implicitly, to cut him down to what is, essentially, his own, egoic “size,” as a highly disorganized charlatan, who got by for so many years with a lot of help from his “friends” and fellow fiends, such as Nancy Salzman.
What an episodic dump truck chockful of fable coming inexorably at life itself and with so much historical impactfulness.
Here I envision what can be called a very loaded slate of symbolism-meeting-flesh, quite directly, possibly one mistake after another, since I view any vengefulness as both self-defeating and futile.
Claviger’s comment
Most of the prisoners who slapped Keith around when he was being held at MDC were Mexicans – and I don’t think that was a coincidence. So, if he gets transferred to a regular prison that has a substantial Mexican population, I suspect that it might not go well for him.
If he actually ended up in a place like Beaumont, he could only survive if he requested – and was approved for – a permanent slot in protective custody. Some prisons have separate SHUs for those inmates and others just include them in the regular SHU.
Notwithstanding my own experience in observing how the BOP interacts with some federal judges and some federal prosecutors, it’s also possible that Keith’s assignment to the SHU at USP Tucson just two days after his restitution hearing was just a coincidence. We’ll just have to see how things play out from here.
Bonnie Jean
I don’t know…Personally, I have no idea where many of my own old digital photographs, files, etc. are at. I have so many hard drives, CDs, memory cards, dead computers…and I moved to so many various places over the years…Never mind if I had other people handling it, I’d be even more clueless. I think there is a good chance Keith really has no idea where the collateral is…especially the stuff that was digital-only. And right now he is also not supposed to contact his former or current harem remembers, right? So he can’t ask them what they did with it either.
Claviger’s response to Bonnie Jean
I’ll have to go back and read exactly what Keith said to the judge when he was asked about the collateral. But I think that in addition to saying he didn’t know where it was, he also indicated – at least to some degree – that he didn’t know what the judge was talking about.
Regardless of what he said – or didn’t say – to the judge, if Keith directed all of his still loyal followers to turn over any collateral they have – or have access to – they’d do that. And that is the main point here.
Although Nicki is very careful when asked about Keith and the collateral – She usually says “Keith never possessed any of the collateral” – the FBI and the federal prosecutors are not interested in playing word games. Nor is Judge Garaufis.
So, if Keith wants to stay in his little safe and secure haven in Tucson – and not spend long stretches in the SHU there – he would be well advised to take an active role in getting the collateral returned ASAP.
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The Bulger Effect
After all, they are supposed to represent the law.
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Gullibility Prize Awarded Here
By the way, a tip of that hat belongs to those wonderfully naive souls who believe Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide and that Bulger’s murder was not a murder for hire but merely an angry prisoner who could not contain his emotions.
And a tip of the hat goes to those who see no connection to Keith Raniere been trundled off to solitary just two days after appearing at a restitution hearing where his attorney berated the judge and got into a staring contest with him and where Raniere himself said he knew nothing about collateral – and during the lead up to his preparing for a supplemental brief on his appeal – the deadline of which is at the same time his solitary confinement ends making it nearly impossible for Raniere to participate in his own appeal preparation.
For more opportunities to believe in more comforting things of a similar nature, please send $5 to Frank Report for your “Free Test on the State of Your Government’s Honesty.”
Cash only, please.
Maybe Raniere has fudged himself badly enough to end up transferred to the Supermax where El Chapo is incarcerated near Florence, Colorado? That’s the ultimate for prison hell and certainly would keep him miserably isolated and could be heavy-duty enough to shove him all the way over the final edge.
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