Maxwell will be given «more freedom, liberty and room» to roam while serving her sentence, federal prison expert Justin Paperny said.
The conditions of Ghislaine Maxwell ‘s detention could dramatically improve after she is sentenced and assigned to a federal prison following her conviction on five out of six sex trafficking charges, according to experts. Maxwell, who was convicted on Wednesday, has been held at the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center since her arrest in July 2020. She has described conditions there as «a living hell,» claiming that she was served maggot-ridden food and had to watch as sewage and rats came into her tiny cell. As a convicted sex offender, Maxwell will be ineligible for placement into a minimum security facility such as the Federal Prison Camp near Alderson, West Virginia—the so-called «Camp Cupcake» where Martha Stewart was detained for five months in 2005. She will instead be placed into an at least low-security prison. Federal prison expert Justin Paperny, the founder of the prison consulting firm White Collar Advice, told Newsweek on Thursday that Maxwell will likely consider her new home an upgrade regardless of the security level. «She will have more freedom, liberty and room than she has right now,» Paperny said. «Life will improve for her, even if she gets 20 or 30 years. It will be measurably different and better when she gets out of that detention center in Brooklyn—night and day.» «There’s going to be a lot of resources, a lot of educational programming,» added Paperny. «You can’t even really compare the two: life in a detention center to what life will be like in a large correctional institution.» A date for Maxwell’s sentencing hearing has not yet been set. The 60-year-old socialite and associate of Jeffrey Epstein could face a prison sentence of up to 65 years, although an at least somewhat lighter sentence is more likely, and as few as 10 years are possible under federal prison sentencing guidelines.
