Lori Loughlin is just over three weeks into her prison sentence for her role in the college admissions scandal — nearly at the halfway point as she’s expecting to get out just before Christmas Day.
So how are things going?
We’ve heard prison was daunting for the TV star and the first night Aunt Becky was “a little weepy.” Considering we’ve heard this place, the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, is known as “Club Fed” — and sounds halfway between a minimum security prison and a one-star hotel — we expected she’d have minimal problems adjusting to life on the inside for just two months.
Related: Lori’s Daughters Are ‘Very Upset’ With Both Their Parents In Prison
However, what we think we know about the prison facility might not be so accurate!
According to an insider speaking with DailyMail.com, it doesn’t sound like Lori is getting the kind of posh treatment we were rolling our eyes at previously.
Holli Coulman, a former inmate who became a prison consultant, told the outlet the Full House alum is “doing OK” for now but also living in a state of dread.
“She’s not crying every night but I have been told she has high anxiety.”
Coulman said the worry is due largely to the coronavirus — something that isn’t necessarily so temporary:
“My clients who are there have said no crying but high anxiety — not about the prisoners but the Covid and the issues with that.”
In case you hadn’t heard, prisons aren’t the safest place to be in a pandemic. Harvey Weinstein caught it behind bars and is reportedly doing very poorly.
It makes sense when you think about it — inmates are stuck in a closed environment, surrounded by strangers, all with the same ventilation system. It would be like being at an airport 24/7 for months — only with lower ceilings.
As you may recall, Lori tried to serve her sentence at home due to her fear of the coronavirus but was denied as she didn’t have any known health risk factors and she isn’t in the dangerous age range. It was unclear at that point whether this was a ploy — as she’d fought against the charges and the sentence at every point, only pleading guilty when it looked like DECADES of prison time were a strong possibility.
So how bad is the coronavirus where Lori is? According to data from the Bureau of Prisons, the Dublin facility has already had 16 positive COVID tests. Recently the prison clamped down to try to keep prisoners social distanced, including suspending ALL personal visits and even limiting phone calls to three per week. It’s not intended as punishment, but it’s obviously having that effect.
Lori is said to be missing her family with the reduced visitation time. (Though she likely wouldn’t be able to reach out to husband Mossimo Giannulli, who recently reported to prison himself, in Lompoc, California. BTW, Lompoc is doing worse when it comes to COVID — they’ve had 701 positive tests so far.)
Additional COVID measures are making things even worse on a day-to-day basis. Prisoners are no longer allowed to work, and even showers are limited. And unlike the rather ritzy menu we heard about when Felicity Huffman was there, with its French Vanilla Cappuccinos and such, Lori is limited to dry cereal and fruit for breakfast and bagged peanut butter sandwiches for lunch AND dinner. It’s a real Fyre Fest in there by the sound of it.
Coulman detailed:
“Right now the women are on lockdown. All the facilities across the US are on lockdown. That means women are locked in their units. In Dublin, women live four to a cubicle. These women are locked in, so they’re not able to get up and go to a job that they would have been working on, maybe in the kitchen. Only a handful of people are. So they have to stay locked in their facility all day. They don’t necessarily have access to showers right now — they’re limited at three days a week.”
Coulman, who served time for credit card fraud and now works with the ACLU by helping prisoners get early release on compassionate grounds, gave DM some more info on the place Lori is at right now — both mentally and physically.
Based on her experience, the Hallmark star’s pampered existence makes all this tougher:
“It’s not being able to go and pick up the phone when the phones are supposed to be on and go call somebody. She’s alone. From a nice home to laying on a mat wearing a uniform. You’re wearing a uniform that is a men’s uniform. She’s wearing boots. Not Gucci shoes, she’s wearing boots. These are things she’s not used to.”
That shock to the system is even worse given what the environment is really like in the Dublin facility. She explained:
“Dublin is very small — it is a standalone. It is one of the older prisons in the US so inside, it is like a rundown community college government building with old tile, old lights, fluorescence. It’s dirty. You never can get rid of the dirt. It is not a pleasant place. They do have some grass in the prison grounds but if you can just imagine, it’s old furniture, metal furniture, nothing aesthetically, remotely modern.”
Prison is obviously not supposed to be nice. But it sounds like the pandemic is turning what is intended to be a humane rehabilitation into a draconian, soul-crushing nightmare — and a recipe for viral infection.
What should be done? The situation doesn’t make Lori LESS guilty of bribing college officials and defrauding the government. But this punishment is sounding more cruel and unusual than we expected.
[Image via Netflix/Columbia Pictures/YouTube.]
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