Kwame Kilpatrick is now an Okie from El Reno.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has assigned the former Detroit mayor to El Reno, a medium-security prison in El Reno, Oklahoma, with a minimum security satellite camp. It was not immediately clear where in the facility Kilpatrick will live, M.L. Elrick reports on the Fox 2 website.
Kilpatrick had hoped to start serving his 28-year sentence on public corruption charges in Texas, where his wife and three sons relocated after he resigned as mayor in 2008 in the wake of the text message scandal Jim Schaefer and I exposed at the Detroit Free Press. U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Edmunds, who sentenced Kilpatrick to prison, had endorsed his desire to be closer to his family.
El Reno is about a four-hour drive from Dallas. For the past 10 days, Kilpatrick had been held at a federal prison transfer facility in Oklahoma after having been moved from the prison in Milan.
Inmates at El Reno have access to a commissary that sells a variety of items, ranging from food to over-the-counter medicine to sporting goods and toiletries. A "Thinking of You" card costs 70 cents.
