By James McNair
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Will the next phase of Bill Erpenbeck's life consist of dormitory-style housing with few guards and no bars? Or will it find him in a heavily fortified penitentiary with barriers and career convicts at every turn?

The answer, it appears, depends on which side of 10 years the former homebuilder's prison sentence falls.

Erpenbeck faces a maximum of 30 years for his bank fraud conviction. The U.S. Probation Office, in its pre-sentence report to U.S. Senior District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel, has recommended 171/2 to 22 years.

The former builder also faces up to 30 years for the obstruction-of-justice charge that he pleaded guilty to Monday. Spiegel will decide not only the length of each term Thursday, but whether they will be served concurrently or consecutively.

The differences among federal minimum-, low- and medium-security prisons is significant. The higher the security level, the more it will look like a prison, said Dan Dunne, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Low- and medium-security prisons, he said, will have double fences topped by coils of razor wire, more guards and more limited movement by inmates.

The notion that well-to-do, well-connected white-collar criminals always go to comfortable "Club Fed" prisons is myth. If Erpenbeck receives a sentence of more than 10 years, chances are good he will be impounded with men with criminal histories and convicted of aggravated offenses.

"Anyone who is serving a sentence of more than 10 years will not go to a minimum-security facility," Dunne said.

Douglas Lansing, a Hopewell, N.J., corrections consultant and a Bureau of Prisons retiree with 25 years of supervisory experience, said federal prison camps are normally reserved for inmates with shorter sentences or who are near the end of their sentences. He said Erpenbeck might end up in a cell to himself or with one or two cellmates.

"The living is rather spartan," said Lansing, whose company is called Corrections Consultants. "There's nothing luxurious about it at all. Everybody has to get up at a prescribed time and work every day. It's a pretty regimented experience."

The Bureau of Prisons considers location requests when assigning people to prisons. Erpenbeck's family in Fort Myers, Fla., will be no more than a day's drive away.

"We try to place an offender within 500 miles of their home to maintain family ties," Dunne said. "It isn't always possible, but it is something we try to do."

Within that 500-mile radius, the bureau operates a low-security prison in Coleman, Fla., about 70 miles north northeast of Tampa. It also has medium-security prisons in Coleman, Marianna (roughly midway between Pensacola and Tallahassee on Florida's Panhandle) and Miami, as well as in Jessup, Ga.

E-mail jmcnair@enquirer.com