Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was not exactly roughing it in his first two weeks locked up for violating probation: He stayed in an air-conditioned hospital room with a private shower. Corrections officers were in “an uproar” because Kilpatrick was being treated “like a rock star,” said the Detroit News. But Warden Heidi Washington explained that she isolated Kilpatrick “for management reasons.” “We want things to be run with as little disruption as possible,” Washington said. Because of Kilpatrick’s notoriety, “it makes things run more efficiently, more calmly and more smoothly to keep him separated.”
But Kilpatrick was moved Tuesday from the Duane Waters Health Center, normally reserved for prisoners with medical conditions, to the Oaks Correctional facility in Manistee, Mich. His new home is more than 250 miles away from the city where he was once mayor. The Oaks houses nearly 800 inmates, offers religious services, a legal library and intramural sports. Meanwhile, Kilpatrick was the subject of prayer vigil Tuesday night in Detroit to celebrate his 40th birthday. Kilpatrick was sentenced last month to 18 months to five years in prison for hiding assets from the court in order to avoid making payments on his $1 million court-ordered restitution. The restitution stemmed from Kilpatrick’s 2008 guilty plea to obstruction of justice for lying under oath at a police whistle-blower trial in 2007.