The day Jeffrey Epstein set foot in the Palm Beach County Stockade to begin serving a 18 month jail sentence on June 30, 2008, the special treatment began.

"I/M Epstein is a 'first time offender' who will be serving a long sentence at this facility and that is a very rare occurrence," wrote Lt. Mark Chamberlain to supervisors at the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office detention center. "He is poorly versed in jail routine and society and his adjustment to incarceration will most likely be atypical. For the time being, I am authorizing that his cell door be left unlocked and he be given liberal access to the attorney room where a TV will be installed."

A Palm Beach Post review of jail records during Epstein's period of incarceration, which lasted a just over a year, shows that in fact the Palm Beach financier was not treated like an ordinary inmate, let alone someone accused of sexually abusing minors. Epstein was housed in a less secure facility, allowed to pay deputies to watch him so he could live in another unit in the stockade and even enjoy work-release privileges not available to other sex offenders.

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There was no indication that Epstein would be able to 'buy his way out of custody' through inside or outside sources," Chamberlain added. Instead, Epstein would be housed separately from the general population "so as to avoid incidents of extortion and manipulation by other inmates."

When questioned by the media at the time about Epstein's living conditions, Chamberlain wrote in an email to Major Christopher Kneisley that the only "change" made to Epstein's unit was the installation of a hot-water dispenser to the drinking fountain, "which should have been there all along," Chamberlain added.

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Epstein's attorney would be allowed to bring in laptops to review legal documents with Epstein but there would be no internet access, Chamberlain wrote: "This is no different than similar arrangements with the PD's (Public Defender's) office for our most destitute of clientele."

But there were other perks provided to Epstein that the "most destitute of clientele" did not receive. Epstein was allowed to be housed at the less secure stockade that housed less violent and dangerous offenders than the jail.

"Upon my taking over Command of the Stockade I returned all sexual offenders to the main detention center," Capt. Ruby Starks wrote in a December 16, 2008, email to a superior seeking to answer a reporter's inquiry about how many other sex offenders were in the stockade. During the duration of his sentence, Epstein was the only sex-offender housed at the stockade.

In February 2009, due to unspecified "operational needs," Epstein was moved to a previously non-staffed housing unit after he agreed to pay deputies to guard him.

Another exception was made for Epstein in October 2008 when he was allowed to leave the stockade, 12 hours a day, six days a week to go to work even though Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw had a policy that prohibits sex offenders from participating in the jail's work-release program.

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PBSO spokeswoman Teri Barbera said on Wednesday that Epstein was not required to register as a sex offender until July 22, 2009 — a day after he was released from jail. Barbera indicated he wasn’t an official sex offender until he registered.

But Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Deborah Dale Pucillo designated him as a sex offender in 2008 when she accepted Epstein’s guilty plea, The Palm Beach Post reported Thursday.

And Florida law says that a person becomes a sex offender when he is convicted of soliciting a minor for sex. Some of the girls Epstein is said to have abused were under the age of 14. The requirement to register with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is separate.

Epstein's 12-hour work days began when his driver, Russian MMA fighter Igor Zinoviev, picked him up at the stockade and drove him to his office at 250 S. Australian Avenue in West Palm Beach. Epstein worked at the Florida Science Foundation, a nonprofit organization he created seven months before accepting the plea bargain.

Although Epstein registered the foundation as a Florida not-for-profit corporation, it appears the foundation did not receive its nonprofit certification from the Internal Revenue Service before Epstein dissolved the foundation in September 2009 — two months after he completed his jail sentence.

Jeffrey Epstein: Lawyer says Epstein had sex with woman during work-release

The purpose of the foundation and what work Epstein performed at his office is not detailed in jail records requested by the Palm Beach Post. Although Epstein wore a GPS monitor around his ankle, plain-clothes deputies guarded Epstein at the office. Deputies were required to verify the identification of visitors and log-in their comings and goings into a log book that was locked in a safe every night.

More than two dozen attorneys and paralegals were on Epstein's visitors list.

The deputies also filed shift reports. In hundreds of reports reviewed by the Post, the deputies recorded the number of visitors Epstein received during their shifts but not the names of the visitors. The visitor log that contained those names was destroyed by the Sheriff's Office as part of routine records purges allowed under Florida law, Barbera said. However, the deputies' shift reports were not destroyed.

As part of his work release, Epstein was allowed to visit his doctors, meet with his probation officer and look for new office space. As he neared the end of his sentence, he was also allowed to work from his waterfront home in Palm Beach between 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.

Although sheriff officials have denied that Epstein received special treatment, Bradshaw announced on Friday that he had opened an internal affairs investigation into Epstein's supervision at his office after a lawyer for more than a dozen of Epstein's accusers said Epstein had sex with at least one young woman while he was on work release.

“I don’t know if any of his visitors were underage but I do know he was able to have visitors under the age of 21 and the information we’ve received from victims, including one who personally visited him, it was for improper sexual conduct,” said attorney Bradley Edwards during a press conference in New York on July 16.

Edwards insisted Epstein was a well behaved inmate because he wasn’t forced to change his ways. He wasn’t going to the foundation to work, he said.



“He was not conducting scientific research,” Edwards said. “He engaged in similar conduct (that was alleged by Palm Beach police in 2006 and recently by federal prosecutors in New York while he was quote, unquote, in jail.”

PBSO said it is investigating to “ensure total transparency and accountability” in its role in the Epstein case, which has drawn national scrutiny.

cstapleton@pbpost.com

@StapletonPBPost