Attention, Martha: Inmates at the Danbury Correctional Facility in Connecticut are eagerly awaiting your arrival.
Prisoners at the minimum-security prison camp where Martha Stewart is expected to serve her sentence have been anticipating the 62-year-old disgraced domestic diva’s arrival for months, according to one ex-con who spent time there.
“Even when I was in, I’d hear a lot of jokes about when she comes, she’ll try to decorate the cells or improve the food,” said Rae Kramer, who last March finished a six-month stint at the Satellite Camp of the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury. “Some prisoners have followed her case since the beginning and have been waiting for her to join them for a while.”
Kramer, 57, gave The Post an inside look at what the convicted stock cheat can expect should she join the 200 or so mostly black and Hispanic female prisoners now living at the overcrowded facility.
Stewart will likely have the choice of getting a bottom bunk bed – a major perk, Kramer said, as prisoners with top bunks regularly tumble while climbing to get rest.
She should also expect decent food, lousy health care, limited recreational activities, poorly ventilated bathrooms and even lesbian sex.
“There’s a phenomenon called ‘gay for the stay,’ ” Kramer said. “A number of heterosexual woman have lesbian relationships. For them, it’s not about sexuality but an issue of companionship.”
Kramer, a married Syracuse woman who was convicted for trespassing during a political rally, said she never experimented with same-sex sex in prison.
Stewart’s days, according to Kramer, will likely begin at 6 a.m., when lights throughout the prison camp are turned on. She’ll have an hour to shower and make her bed before eating breakfast from 7:15 a.m. to 7:45 a.m.
For the next eight hours, it’s off to work. The guru of good living can earn from 12 cents to 40 cents an hour. Jobs include plumbing, gardening and other trades, although Kramer said she expects Stewart will work in the dining room for 12 cents an hour – money she can spend at the prison commissary.
Stewart’s new wardrobe will consist of black, steel-toed shoes, button-down khaki shirts and matching pants. She will have a 300-minute cap on phone calls per month.
Following a 4 p.m. mandatory head count, Stewart will have dinner at 5 and get her mail afterward. The rest of the evening will be her recreational time, and Stewart can watch television, take an arts-and-crafts class, exercise or read. There’s another mandatory head count, and then it’s lights out and bedtime at 11 p.m.
Stewart will live in dormitory-like rooms that hold anywhere from two to 16 people. She will have the freedom to walk outside along the prison’s open grounds, but must be back inside for the head counts.
“I think she’ll do fine as long as she does not try to claim any special privileges and assumes she’ll be treated like everyone else,” Kramer said. “And she shouldn’t ask people why they are there, although people will share that information if they form a friendship with her.”
Stewart was sentenced to five months in jail and five months of house arrest – “hard time” she plans to spend at her largest estate, a 153-acre country mansion in upstate Bedford.