Puppies and pampering: Inside Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘cushy’ life in jail for sex trafficking
After being sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking, shocking new details have emerged about Ghislaine Maxwell’s life in jail.
As Hamlet might have opined if he’d had a Substack, there is something rotten in the state of the States.
Get this: Ghislaine Maxwell - a person convicted by a jury of her peers for running a child sex trafficking ring; someone who has caused unknowable, unimaginable pain and suffering in the lives of dozens if not hundreds of women - just got a puppy.
In recent days the full extraordinary and sickening extent of the “luxury” conditions that Maxwell is now ‘revelling in’ since being moved to a low security prison camp have been revealed and they read like the all-inclusive list for a Fiji four star.
The 63-year-old is serving her time in a Federal Prison Camp (otherwise known as ‘Club Fed’) in Bryan, Texas, which is listed as one of the “Best Jails in America to Serve Time”
MORE: Insider’s expose Prince Andrew’s ‘wasted’ life
Maxwell has reportedly been getting special meals made for her and ‘room service’; has been provided with snacks; has a Bureau of Prisons employee who acts as her “personal secretary and administrative assistant”; has access to staff-only areas; can work out whenever she wants; and has “her every need” ‘catered for’ since being transferred from Florida to ‘Club Fed’ in Texas in July.
Well, Lady Justice just dumped her scales in revulsion and had a quick vomit.
In recent days The Atlantic published the details of a tranche of emails sent by Maxwell since being relocated to ‘Club Fed’ about her new life and reading them, I guarantee, will make your blood pressure spike like Vesuvius on a hot day.
“Yippe skipee”, she wrote to her brother about an upcoming visit: “it gladdens the cockles of my heart”, she said, to hear from an old friend; “I am much much happier”, she shared.
Whistleblowers have also been speaking out about Maxwell’s handling, revealing to Congressman Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, the full scope of the reportedly “highly unusual” plush perks she’s getting.
Maxwell’s 2025 did not start this well, with her being imprisoned in a stricter, higher grade, facility in Florida.
However as the year progressed, inside the Washington Beltway and downwind of the Maccas drive through, Donald Trump started to face mounting, cross-aisle pressure over his years-long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
So in July, a Department of Justice representative went to the alligator state to interview Maxwell over the course of two days, and wouldn’t you know it! She exonerated Trump and said she had never seen him in “any inappropriate setting”.
MORE:Shock: Andrew paid Queen Lodge with pepper
Now, according to the leaked emails and whistleblower information detailed in a letter Raskin sent to Trump, the range of behind-bars extras Maxwell is getting has been exposed.
There’s no one that better encapsulates Maxwell’s new life than the fact that been ‘provided’ with a puppy to “play with”.
Retching yet?
There’s more, oh so much more.
According to Raskin, inside the prison, “the deference and servility to Ms Maxwell have reached such preposterous levels that one of the top officials at the facility has complained that he is ‘sick of having to be Maxwell’s b**ch’”.
Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence and who shown what prosecutors said was an “utter lack of remorse”, can now reportedly exercise whenever she wants and is able ‘devote significant time to reading’, according to CNN, which sounds more like your and my perfect Saturday!
So fine for someone who facilitated the abuse of minors to get to have a nice trot on the treadie and then to stretch out with the latest Thursday Murder Club ripper.
Just desserts? Maxwell will have two. But only if she can get extra hot fudge.
The 63-year-old has also allegedly enjoyed meals and mail delivered to her cell; the use of a special area to receive guests; “an assortment of snacks and refreshments” laid on when people come to see her and unlimited toilet paper, which other inmates have to purchase for about $3.50 a roll.
(“You don’t understand the value of toilet paper in prison. It is hoarded. It is hidden from staff,” Sam Mangel, a prison consultant and former inmate himself with clients at Bryan, told The Guardian.)
I’m just shocked she’s making do without a nightly turn down service and complimentary mint on her pillow.
Finally we have proof: Karma does not exist.
Other emails from Maxwell read like a cheery Yelp review, saying of her Texas stay,
“The food is legions better, the place is clean, the staff responsive and polite.”
At other times she has sent emojis (to her brother, “You should look like a lawyer visiting me :)” ), talked about how Croatia is a favourite holiday spot, and discussed paparazzi outside the prison with her lawyer, who wrote that a particular snapper was “one of the best, “if not THE best!”
“Yippe skipee” indeed!
It’s not just creature comforts that are on offer for Maxwell but the former socialite is also reportedly getting “wide-ranging assistance” from the facility’s warden, which has “alarmed” local Texas attorneys who have repped detainees at the same facility. According to both The Atlantic and Raskin’s letter, warden Tanisha Hall has been helping her with her application for an early release.
Maxwell has “used Warden Hall as her personal secretary and administrative assistant”, per Raskin, and “is directly helping Ms. Maxwell copy, print, and send documents” related to her application for an early release. In one email, Maxwell praised Hall, describing her, The Atlantic reports, as “as good as they come.”
Patrick McLain, the lawyer of a fellow Bryan inmate, told the outlet it is “unheard of” for prisoners to get the sort treatment that Maxwell is receiving.
Neama Rahmani, founder of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor told the Guardian, said “this is not typical”.
Talk about quid pro…woah.
There are two other women who are part of Maxwell’s Texas prison story.
It was prison nurse Noella Turnage, from a conservative Republican family but reportedly outraged by Maxwell’s close relationship with the warden, who leaked Maxwell’s emails to Raskin. She has now been fired.
And it was fellow Bryan inmate Julie Howell, who is serving a one-year sentence for theft and whose daughter was sex trafficked, who revealed to the Telegraph in August that the rest of the prisoners were ‘disgusted’ by Maxwell’s arrival. Howell was subsequently transferred out of the camp.
And as far as anyone knows, Maxwell still has the puppy.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Puppies and pampering: Inside Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘cushy’ life in jail for sex trafficking
