T.D. El-Amin gets ready for prison next week
Kevin Killeen Reporting
kakilleen@cbs.com
ST. LOUIS (KMOX Radio) -- Former State Representative T. D. El-Amin finds out when and where he will go to prison, after being sentenced last month for bribery.
El-Amin had requested to serve his time at the federal prison close to St. Louis – Memphis, Tennessee or Marion, Illinois.
Now, he has now learned that he is being assigned to the federal prison ten hours from home – on Maxwell Airforce Base in Montgomery, Alabama. He’s scheduled to begin serving his 18 month sentence “sometime next week,” he told KMOX.
El-Amin declined to say more today than where and when he’s going, promising to have “much more to say” next Monday about his trial, the FBI, the court system and going to prison.
The 39-year old father of five pleaded guilty September to soliciting a bribe, after he was caught in an FBI sting operation taking $2,100 from a north St. Louis gas station owner who needed help with a series of nagging city inspections. What El-Amin didn’t know was the gas station owner was working with the feds and their meetings being recorded.
The place where he’s going is described on the Department of Justice website as " a minimum security facility that houses male offenders."
The DOJ website says minimum security institutions “have dormitory housing, a relatively low staff-to-inmate ratio, and limited or no perimeter fencing. These institutions are work- and program-oriented; and many are located adjacent to larger institutions or on military bases, where inmates help serve the labor needs of the larger institution or base.”
A 2006 report in the Alabama Press Register on life at the Maxwell Airforce Base prison characterized it as a “club fed” facility that features tennis courts, soccer and softball fields, bocce ball and a wood working shop.
Non-violent and white collar federal inmates work there maintaining the base grounds or work at the laundry facility.
Most minimum security federal prison camps have air conditioned dormitories , with two inmates occupying an 8 by 9 foot room, that includes bunk beds, a desk and locker for each inmate.
The two other prison sites El-Amin had requested both have minimum security satellite facilities. Marion is 122 miles from St. Louis.
Memphis is 242 miles from St. Louis. And Montgomery will be 611 miles from home and family visits.