Lord Black of Crossharbour will become prisoner No 18330-424 on March 3 after losing his fight to stay out of jail while he appeals his US fraud conviction.
A judge in Chicago rejected the former Telegraph chairman’s request to push back the start of his 6½year prison term to June 15 to give the appeals court time to hear arguments in the case. He is currently free on $21 million (£10 million) bail at his waterfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Judge Amy St Eve ruled late on Thursday that Black had “failed to demonstrate that a ‘substantial question of law or fact’ is likely to result in reversal or a new trial on appeal”. Black will seek to overturn her decision.
The disgraced press baron, once a swaggering presence on the London social scene, faces the prospect of donning a prison uniform in only four weeks’ time.
The British peer, who renounced his Canadian citizenship to take his seat in the House of Lords, is asking to be treated like an American so that he can serve his time in a minimum-security prison, rather than one surrounded by razor wire. He had asked to serve his time in the minimum-security prison camp at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, the original “Club Fed” because it once offered tennis courts to white-collar inmates.
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However, Eglin was closed down in 2005 after being hit by a hurricane, so Black’s lawyers requested the low-security Coleman prison in central Florida instead.
Coleman, with a population of 5,000 in low, medium and highsecurity facilities, is the largest prison in the United States. It offers inmates activities such as shuffleboard, exercise bicycles and bocce ball, the Italian version of bowls. Prison work ranges from peeling potatoes and doing dishes to tutoring other inmates in the library.
Its perimeter, however, is circled by a double ring of razor-wire fences and patrolled by armed guards.
Black now wants to be assigned to the minimum-security prison camp in Miami to make it easier for Lady Black, the journalist Barbara Amiel, to see him. “Such a designation will greatly facilitate his wife’s ability to visit him regularly,” his lawyers said in a letter to the Bureau of Prisons.
As a non-US citizen, Black does not usually qualify for a minimum-security institution because of the risk of flight. His lawyers asked the Bureau of Prisons to waive the “Public Safety Factor” relating to non-Americans in deciding where to assign him.
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“Mr Black has been a very productive member of society, extensively investing in the American economy as a business owner over many years,” his lawyers wrote. “He is not a member of any disruptive group.”
They added: “It is hard to an inmate less likely to choose to escape.”