Black trades seaside mansion for jail

Conrad Black will not, after all, have to serve his time in a tough federal penitentiary, sharing a cell with a serial killer. Instead, Judge Amy St Eve, sentencing him to six and half years in jail yesterday, recommended that he when he turns himself in to the prison authorities on March 3 he should be allowed to serve his sentence in the low-security prison in Coleman, Florida, where he will find himself in the company of other fraudsters and drug dealers.

Even so, circumstances will be very different from the life he has been able to enjoy during his bail period at his elegant seaside mansion in Palm Beach, 300 kilometres down the road from Coleman.

There are more than 2,000 inmates living in the blocks at Coleman. Black will likely sleep in a bunk bed in a dormitory shared with up to 15 other inmates. Like all prisoners, he will be expected to take on a prison job, paying $20 a month. He should be able to escape cleaning floors and lavatories by opting to teach in the prison school - with American history and politics likely to be his chosen subjects.

He will be permitted to spend time on the phone. He will be allowed visitors but no conjugal visits from his wife, the journalist Barbara Amiel.

The disgraced peer has been allowed to keep his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, along with the proceeds from the sale of his New York apartment, despite the extent of his fraud. But whether Barbara will hang on in Palm Beach while he serves his time is debatable: a big city party girl at heart, she is said to have found the virtual house imprisonment there during Conrad's bail period insufferable. Her friends believe she will move to London and fly in and out of Orlando, Florida for regular visits to see her husband. ·