No Country Club for grocery heiress Lea Fastow

Lea Fastow the wife of former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow, pleaded guilty in May, admitting that she helped her husband hide money from financial schemes that fueled the one-time energy giant's December 2001 failure. Lea Fastow got the maximum 12-month sentence for the misdemeanor.

Fastow's legal team had asked that the judge to recommend the Federal Bureau of Prisons place her in a minimum-security camp for women where her two young sons could have enjoyed playground equipment during visits. She could have worn shorts and T-shirts, played softball, and perhaps tended to one of the complex's vegetable and flower gardens.

Instead the U.S. District Judge David Hittner refused to recommend a specific institution, and the prisons bureau last month assigned her to the Houston prison. The prison is more restrictive than minimum-security camps because it houses inmates -- both men and women -- of all kinds of security classifications. Most are there for drug crimes. She will share an 8-foot-by-10-foot cell in a gray, 11-story building where the only chance to go outside is during brief and rare outings on the roof. She'll probably prepare food or wash bed sheets for less than 50 cents a day.