The bright spots in Davidson's life are the visits from his children, but he sees them just once every two months, because the trip entails a four-hour round-trip and missing a day of school. Though he can speak to his kids on the phone, 300 minutes per month means just ten minutes a day, or two minutes for each child.

Last year, Davidson missed his first son's bar mitzvah. It filled him with unspeakable sadness. "There were moments of real black dog -- Churchill, you know."

So how does he pull himself up?

"I don't know if I do."

I ask if prison would be easier if he believed he'd been guilty as charged.

"Yes," he says. "It's exhausting to be fighting all the time. But that's the way I am. And when they bury me, they'll write on my tombstone: IMWI."

Before DeDe Brooks was sentenced to six months of house arrest for her role in price-fixing at Sotheby's, she was reportedly comparison-shopping for jails. Novak says it's a pointless pursuit. "That's one of those myths -- that Allenwood is better than Schuylkill, and Schuylkill is better than Morgantown," he says. "I can put you in touch with inmates at each who'll say that theirs is the worst."

That said, there are differences between institutions that even the most casual outsider could observe. The ones in more bucolic settings (Allenwood) or warmer climates (Eglin, Lompoc) tend to be more soothing for inmates and less traumatic for families. In the past decade, Otisville camp, just 80 miles north of Manhattan, has developed a reputation for ably serving the needs of observant Jews, providing a full-time Orthodox rabbi, a kitchen with separate sets of dishes, and an assortment of kosher vending machines.

With the exception of a few specialized facilities, Novak says, the quality of the health care in the federal prison system leaves much to be desired. For the past few months, Lauersen has been walking around with a broken dental bridge, because the Allenwood low offers only basic dentistry. At Fairton, Freddy broke his wrist playing basketball. If one of the inmates, a physician himself, hadn't set it, he doesn't know what his wrist would look like now -- he had to wait 48 hours to see a doctor. (The inmate, he adds, was thrown in the hole for treating him.) "And the worst thing," says Freddy, "is that after my wrist was finally set, they still wouldn't give me a bottom bunk, those fucks."

Novak also says his clients spend a great deal of energy trying to avoid low- and medium-security facilities, convinced life in camps would be more pleasant. They're almost always wrong. "Without exception, my clients report that lows and mediums are better," he says, "and for two reasons: the pettiness of the staff, and privacy."

Charles spent time in the Allenwood low and the Allenwood camp. "There was way less nonsense at the low," he says. "The camp was like nursery school. The guards gave you a shot" -- lingo for an incident report -- "if your shirt wasn't tucked in."

And the living conditions at the camp were much worse. "I was in a 40-man dorm, as if in a kids' camp," he says. "The noise -- God, it was relentless. The older guys would be trying to read, while the younger ones would be rapping, arguing, listening to music. You thought your head was going to explode."

Still, the psychological distance between camps and lows can be measured in light-years. Camps don't menace through architecture; most aren't even surrounded by as much as a picket fence. Low-security facilities, on the other hand, are surrounded by a double perimeter crowned with Slinkies of razor wire. To get to the visiting complex, families must pass through a series of heavy steel doors, which seal, every time, with a vengeful slam.

Charles remembers a spring day when his 9-year-old son came to visit at Allenwood camp. The child wandered away from his mother and uncle and pointed to an indeterminate point in the hills.

"Dad? What's that over there?"

Charles ambled over. "Over where?"

His son lowered his voice. "Nothing. I just wanted to talk to you."

"Yes . . . ?"

"Um, I was wondering if you ever cried while you were here."

The answer, until that very moment, had been no. Charles turned away, composed himself.

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Because I see there are no fences here. I figure I could sneak in and spend some time with you if you wanted."

When Lauersen first arrived at Allenwood, he asked if his medical skills could be put to use. He was told, emphatically, that they could not. Today, he helps make scarves and hats for the inmates. He earns 10 cents an hour.

But the inmates still call him Doc, and they're continually soliciting his expertise. Not that long ago, a guy named Tony shyly pulled Lauersen aside and asked for advice on the best times of the month to impregnate his wife. "He was very happy," says Lauersen. "He was leaving, and he said the first day home was a fertile day."

In the evenings, Lauersen keeps his schedule flexible. On Wednesday nights, he joins a group of men who watch old movie musicals like West Side Story and Bye Bye Birdie. On the other nights, he writes (letters, notes for a memoir), works out (on the stationary bicycle), reads periodicals (he's sent Newsweek, Time, The New Yorker, and New York), responds to letters (he gets lots of letters, particularly from former patients), or peruses JAMA and various gynecological journals -- which can make him a minor hit around the dorm, seeing that outright porn is prohibited. (Stuff and Maxim, however, are immensely popular.)

"The men look at any journal with women," he says. "Anything. Anything. They're so starved. They think of gynecologists as the luckiest men in the world. They think all they do is look at women.

"Besides medicine, what I miss most is being with a woman," he adds. "When you are surrounded by men, and only men, there is nothing you want more than the company of a woman."

I ask whether a person can have a good day in prison.

"A good day?"

Yes.

"No."

What about a better day?

He thinks about it. "If the weather's good," he finally answers. "And there's no harassment. Then yes. That's a better day."