Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes self-surrendered this week to a Texas women’s prison camp where she began serving her 11.25-year sentence for defrauding investors in her failed blood-testing startup, and although she is currently appealing her conviction, it appears she may have an extended stay at the facility regardless of that outcome.
While some view Holmes’ decade-plus sentence as too light for her role in a scheme that cost victims hundreds of millions of dollars, others say it is too heavy for a non-violent offense.
Either way, her life in federal detention will differ from the outside.
Holmes, 39, was checked in Tuesday to the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, a low-level security facility roughly 100 miles from Houston, where she grew up, but is states away from the San Diego home where she and partner Billy Williams most recently lived raising their small children.
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The couple has a nearly 2-year-old son and a 3-month-old baby, who was conceived after Holmes’ conviction and prior to sentencing. According to Lynn Espejo, who served 24 months at Bryan over a fraud conviction and now works as an advocate for criminal justice reform, Holmes’ inability to raise her own children will likely be the most difficult part of her incarceration.
“It is traumatic having your freedom taken away, obviously,” Espejo told FOX Business, “But just living away from your family like that.… My kids were grown. I can’t imagine how it’s going to feel for her that she has very small children that she doesn’t get to raise.”
Like any federal detention facility, new inmates are strip-searched upon arrival, and their street clothes are mailed to their loved ones and replaced with a khaki uniform and boots.
Each prisoner is assigned to a small concrete room, which they share with three other women, each with their own bunk bed and a high school-sized locker for personal belongings.
Holmes will be paired with a fellow prisoner to help guide her, known as a “big sister,” who will walk her through filling out her first commissary sheet, Espejo explained. Inmates must purchase all of their own hygiene products like soap and shampoo and are allowed to spend up to $350 per month on such items.
New prisoners at Bryan typically start out working in the kitchen for the first 90 days before they are able to apply for another position. Espejo says “newbies'” kitchen shifts begin at 4:30 a.m. and run until around noon.
Espejo says that eventually Holmes, being a professional, will likely get a job at the facility teaching classes to other inmates within her realm of expertise that might help them become employed once they are released.
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The 655 offenders housed at Bryan are allowed to have visitors on the weekends and on holidays, but can be limited depending on the availability of visiting space.
Inmates are also able to email family and friends through a fee-based system known as TRULINCS and may also buy up to 300 minutes per month to speak on the phone with loved ones.
“Divide that out by 30 days, that’s roughly 10 minutes a day to talk to your family,” Espejo noted. “It’s not much, and if you’ve got little kids you’re trying to help parent” like Holmes, she says, “it really has to be difficult.”
Holmes will certainly make friends with other inmates, Espejo says, because nonviolent offenders in particular tend to rally around each other and try to help each other cope with their circumstances. According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, some fellow inmates were already hoping to befriend Holmes ahead of her arrival.
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Espejo acknowledges that Bryan may not appear as bad as some women’s prisons, given that there is a recreational area and a track outdoors to walk around. Still, she says, the place is “horrible,” and has blogged extensively about the conditions and alleged corruption at the facility.
“I wouldn’t say it’s the hellhole of the [Bureau of Prisons],” she said. “But it’s close.”