One would think that after everything that’s gone wrong for Bernie in the past twelve months or so, he wouldn’t even be left with a pot to piss in. One would be wrong, as he has enough money sitting around to hire a consultant to shop for the best prison.

Granted, if you’re going to be spending 150 years somewhere, you’d like for that place to be as pleasant as can be. Being a prison, it can only be so pleasant, but there’s still a world of difference between Sing Sing and a Club Fed, and that world of difference is best summed up by whether or not your fellow inmate has been paid to shiv you in your sleep. Now, some of you who have even a barely-developed sense of justice may be wondering just how this prison-shopping business works.

Madoff’s judge recommended that he be tossed into the clink at a low- or medium-security facility somewhere in the Northeast, to make it easier for his victims to come spit on him.  But the judge only decides what the sentence will be, while the location is left solely up to the Bureau of Prisons, who would generally take the judge’s recommendation under advisement. The prison consultant Madoff hired would basically lobby the Bureau of Prisons to set Bernie up in a nicer, lower-security prison because he’s an old man and not a violent criminal and blah blah blah.

So far, Madoff has spent his time in a maximum-security environment at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. Hoelter said, “He has been incarcerated under very difficult conditions in these past months. Anywhere he goes is likely to be better than where he is now, unless they throw him into the Supermax . . . He will be able to get exercise. He will be able to do something that makes him productive. He may be able to tutor other inmates.”

Tutor other inmates? This can only end well. But the point is well-made that anywhere he goes will be better: look at the 8×8 cubicle you’re sitting in right now, and imagine being locked in there 23 hours a day. And the light’s always on. And it’s really friggin’ hot.

Bernie’s prison helper has done this before, for such notables as insider trading champion Ivan Boesky, insider trading silver medalist Michael Milken, and Sotheby’s price-fixer Alfred Taubman, so he’s ridden this pony before.

Boesky served his time at the Lompoc Federal Prison, aka Club Fed West. Mike Milken served 22 months at a minimum-security prison in Pleasanton, California. Taubman spent his nine and a half months at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota, getting medical care on the government dime.

So with any luck, Bernie will be sentenced to 150 years of couch-surfing in lieu of actual jail time.