On Friday, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was moved from the hospital to Federal Medical Center Devens, a minimum security prison facility about 40 miles west of Boston, where inmates can cook their own meals and congregate to “watch television, play cards or read.” However, on Sunday a prison spokesman explained that the facility isn’t “fairly pleasant” for everyone, and the 19-year-old suspected bomber certainly won’t be visiting the prison’s arts and crafts building.
The facility houses a wide spectrum of inmates, from white-collar criminals with chronic conditions to convicts who would be in a maximum-security prison if it weren’t for their medical problems. Obviously, Tsarnaev falls in the latter category. Spokesman John Colautti says he’s locked inside a 10-by-10-foot cell with a steel door, a slot used to pass food, and an observation window. Some cells in the more restrictive area are watched with video cameras, and inmates in those sections can have reading materials, but not TVs or radios.
“Really this type of facility is fully capable of handling him and it’s not that much of an inconvenience because it’s more or less business as usual,” Collauti said — though, inmates like Tsarnaev might be annoying other prisoners from afar. Larry Levine, founder of Wall Street Prison, a firm that dispenses advice on surviving prison, tells The Wall Street Journal, “They mix all these people together of different custody levels — you’re like locked down.” His review: “I would rather choose the regular institution just because of the lifestyle.”
