With a team of prison guards blocking for him, Plaxico Burress doesn’t have to worry about any unnecessary roughness during his stay at Oneida Correctional Facility.
The guards at the upstate Rome prison keep Burress under protective custody — meaning the only time the ex-Giants star is seen by prisoners in the general population is during visiting hours.
And even when he gets visitors, special precautions are taken.
“Because of who he is, I’m going to put you up front near us,” a guard told a Post reporter in the prison visitor’s room, “in case the other prisoners or their visitors come up and bother him, asking for his autograph or taking a picture.”
The only prisoners he gets to socialize with are others in protective custody — like “Sopranos” actor Lilo Brancato, who was convicted of burglary but cleared of a murder charge after a cop was fatally shot.
Burress, ashen-faced and scraggly, briefly sat down with The Post wearing a forest-green prison shirt that read “Burress, Plaxico 09R3260.”
Asked about his life behind bars, Burress shouted, “What?” and then walked away.
“Whenever we see him walking, he has a nervous look, like he’s really nervous,” one inmate’s mom quoted her son as saying. “It’s like he’s trying to look to the side, but he doesn’t want anyone to notice. He seems scared.”
Burress’ visibly pregnant wife, Tiffany, and their 3-year-old son, Elijah, visited him Saturday and again yesterday.
On Saturday, his wife attempted to bring him a GE microwave oven but was turned away by guards and had to lug it back to her white Range Rover.
Yesterday, Burress’ son arrived at the prison parking lot, ecstatic to see his father.
Inside, the former star receiver hugged Tiffany, and then he and his son played with toy trucks, other visitors said.
“He was very good with his son,” one visitor said. “He was loving. He kept hugging him and kissing him. They both seemed very, very happy.”
Serving a 20-month sentence for shooting himself with his own illegal gun, Burress is hardly doing hard time.
On the prison’s V wing, he has his own cell, and the only other prisoners he has to interact with are the fewer than two dozen inmates in the same boat.
His wife may not have managed to get the microwave inside, but she did come bearing other goodies — arriving with a large package of food.
“The food in there just isn’t very good,” another visitor said, noting that most prisoners ask for bread, snacks and canned goods from the outside.