A year after he walked into Florida’s Coleman Federal Correctional Facility to start his six-and-a-half year sentence for fraud and obstructing justice, former newspaper magnate Conrad Black appears to be bearing up well. It must help that the prison offers plenty of opportunity for personal improvement through reading, study and “finding interesting people to talk to”, as he explained in an email he sent recently to the National Post, the Canadian newspaper he founded.

“There is no violence,” he says, “and everyone tries to make conditions for everyone as decent as possible.” Interestingly, he does not rule out a transfer request to a British prison if all his avenues of appeal dry up. I can understand why. Under US law Black must serve 85 per cent of his sentence. In the United Kingdom he would be eligible for parole at the halfway point. But open-prison life in the United Kingdom is a world away from the salubrious environs

of Coleman.

There, Black rises at 7am, “except on the weekends and holidays when it is possible to sleep in”. He eats granola and then goes to his workplace, where he tutors high-school leavers. He converses with “convivial people”, then returns to his unit for lunch. After attending to his emails, he practises on the piano for up to an hour and then returns to his tutoring.

Work over at 3pm, he attends to more emails, rests between 4pm and 6pm, eats dinner and then goes for a walk around the yard, “drinking coffee well made by Colombian fellow residents”. He reads and attends to more emails before bed. “In some respects,” he told the Post, “there is less intrusion here of the irritations of daily life than on the outside.” He will find such comfort and bonhomie largely absent from UK prison life.

Even in open prisons, drugs and violence are endemic. In the United States, family and friends can visit five days a week for up to four hours at a time. Here in the United Kingdom, he will be lucky to get one two-hour visit each week. There is no email facility in any United Kingdom prison. Communication is by letter or telephone only. If I were him, I would stay put and spend the extra time drinking Colombian coffee and perfecting his piano playing, an activity he was apparently denied as a child.