Cable TV, fully equipped recreation rooms and yards, and every Friday the Captain's Plate: Alaskan king crab, shrimp and scallops.
Such is life at the Fairbanks Correctional Center in Alaska, at least according to inmates who ranked it No. 1 in "Your Guide to America's Top Ten Jails.""It has amazed me. You ought to be in some of these places," said Joseph Henslik, 41, who is serving eight years for forgery in the Adams County Detention Facility in Brighton, Colo., outside Denver.
Henslik and two inmates at other jails, John Shinners and John Molena, compiled the list of the nation's most luxurious lock-ups based on their own experiences and interviews with more than 100 other inmates.
Their guide appears in July's issue of Playboy, but a magazine spokesman said the ratings weren't scientifically compiled or corroborated.
Jail administrators from Alaska to Florida said most of the amenities are required by state law or were offered to defuse tension.
"We keep it clean, we keep it orderly, and we treat people like human beings," said L.T. Brown, warden of the 10th-ranked Hernando County Jail, in Brooksville, Fla..
"They get the impression it's a real hotel here, but it's still a jail. It's not easy being in jail," said Capt. Johnny Bowman, who works at the Cabell County Jail (ranked No. 6) in Huntington, W.Va.
Among the runners-up:
- Boulder County Jail (No. 2) in Boulder, Colo., where inmates sleep one to a cell in a guaranteed smoke-free environment, are allowed regular contact visits and use of a videocassette recorder.
- Oahu Community Correctional Center (No. 3) in Honolulu, which offers aerobics classes for inmates and feasts including roast Kalua pig on holidays.
- Clark County Detention Center (No. 4) in Las Vegas, which - according to the inmates - allows unlimited free local phone calls and lets inmates place bets with friends on the outside.
Jim Symbol, superintendent of the Fairbanks Correctional Center, said he hasn't heard much from the public about the Fairbanks jail's No. 1 ranking.
"I did have a woman call who said young people would see this and think jail's not a bad place to be," he said. "I see her point, but I took it as kind of a tongue-in-cheek thing - and it was funny."
He says inmates were served crab only once; Henslik says two inmates reported eating it every Friday.
At the Evans County Jail in southern Georgia (No. 7), Sheriff Eddie Bradley said the inmates were right about the good food, which is catered from a diner.
But Bradley said prisoners don't "lounge on down pillows," as the list claims. "The only down pillows in this jail are the ones that have been down on the floor," he said.