The New York Times reports on Lea Fastow, former assistant treasurer of the Enron Corporation, who has been sentenced to 12 months in the Federal Detention Center in Houston for fraud. She will be sharing the facility with approximately 1,100 other inmates. It may not be your regular sort of community but it is a community never the less. The main distinguishing features of this high security community are

- the violent nature of many of its members
- the racist, hardline and sexist views that predominate
- that whites, like Lea, are a minority group and she can expect to suffer accordingly.

This will undoubtedly be a very difficult time for her and one wonders what she will draw from it. It is an opportunity for a woman from the ruling class, who is used to living in a luxury mansion with servants and all mod cons, to gain an insight into what life is like for the poor and disenfranchised of her community. It will be a difficult trial for her but, as The Green Man has observed on other occasions, great jewels of wisdom are only confered by way of great trials. She has an opportunity to have her life transformed and enriched by the experience if she has the strength of character for it. The Green Man hopes she has because she has the capacity and resources to do great good in her community when she is released from prison.