No Way to Treat a Lady

Jean Struven Harris behind bars is a study in incongruities. She once ran her own kingdom, the Madeira School, where heed was paid and homage given to the headmistress. She once presided over gourmet luncheons, toast and tea, with women who would come and go, talking of Michelangelo. But white gloves and perfect diction are not exactly called for in an American prison. She no longer manages an institution. It manages her.

Until Judge Russell Leggett sentences her on March 20, Harris will stay at the Westchester department of corrections complex in Valhalla, N.Y. As she arrived last week a few of the prison's 68 female inmates shouted at her, "You, Jean Harris, you're coming to join us!" Harris was led to her own 5-ft. by 7-ft. pink room, out of sight from most of the other inmates. A guard explained, "We don't want anyone to assault her." Harris' closest neighbor is a frail, wealthy and well-traveled woman who is awaiting trial for second-degree murder, charged with shooting her 68-year-old husband at the breakfast table. Though Harris was put on a 24-hour suicide watch--and some observers claimed she was starting a hunger strike when she refused "tasteless" prison food--she has been visited by friends and lawyers bearing richer fare. Says Warden Norwood Jackson: "She is eating cookies and candy. This doesn't indicate to me that she is on a hunger strike." By midweek, Harris had volunteered to work in the library cataloguing books.

Because Harris has been convicted of murder, she must serve her time at a maximum-security prison, not one of the fenced-in "country clubs" favored by Watergate felons and other white-collar convicts. Her home will be the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, 47 miles northeast of New York City. Despite its red brick colonial buildings and its playing fields, Bedford Hills is a long way from Madeira. Outside there is a 12-ft.-high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire; inside there are 360 two-story cellblocks.

Harris will arrive in handcuffs, as required by prison regulations, and cross a reception area containing glass cases filled with prisoner handicrafts such as pottery and knitted baby clothes. After she has been photographed, fingerprinted and given a medical exam, she will stay in the reception block for at least two weeks to help her adjust to her new surroundings. Eventually she will become part of the 420-woman population of the prison proper, 60% of it black and 15% Hispanic. Violence is rare at the women's institution; murders even rarer. "We are always overcrowded," says the "escorting officer" who, with a nicety Harris might appreciate, hates to be called a guard. The inmates are referred to as "clients."

For someone whose life was filled with grand passion and frightening complexity, prison routine may prove deadening. Harris will rise at 6:30 a.m. and eat a breakfast of cereal, fruit, toast and occasionally bacon and eggs. Then she will do manual work: cleaning, floor mopping, dish washing. For clothes, she can choose between jumpers and slacks of mint green, yellow or beige. Luncheon and dinner entrees include meat loaf, Swiss steak, stuffed cabbage and similar hearty fare not common to the Tarnower table. In the evenings she will be allowed to wear her own blouses, stockings, shoes and a watch (if it is not worth more than $25).

Her 6-ft. by 12-ft. "room" in the main cell-block will contain a seatless toilet, a basin, bed and two shelves. Prisoners may decorate their rooms with bedspreads, curtains, wooden toilet covers, bedside tables and plants. Each floor has a recreation room with a television set, and if Harris becomes a star prisoner, she may some day watch TV and cook in her own cellblock. There is a school on the premises, though many of the courses may not interest a former headmistress: remedial English, auto repair, IBM keypunching, hairdressing. Bedford Hills is not an oppressively grim place to serve a sentence, but, as one guard says, "the hard thing is to be inside. You can make a prison almost a paradise, but if you can't leave, it remains a prison."

Unless Harris' lawyers are able to win an appeal or the Governor grants her clemency after she serves half her time, Bedford Hills could be the murderess's home for the next 15 years (the minimum sentence for her crime). By then she will be 72.

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