I Don't Remember This In "Shawshank Redemption"

Apparently prisons aren't the urine-filled hellholes the movies make them out to be:

Eric Brown wanted lobster, and as a gang leader in a Maryland state prison, he seemed to think he was entitled to it. After all, with the help of prison employees, the inmate already had access to champagne and Grey Goose, federal prosecutors said yesterday.

In a phone call this month to his wife, as investigators secretly listened in, Brown complained that his smuggling operation had come up short -- that he had to settle for salmon with shrimp and crab imperial. And, prosecutors said, he asked her for a "good cigar" to go with his top-shelf vodka.

Brown is among two dozen defendants, four of them current or former state prison employees, charged with drug conspiracy and other offenses in indictments unsealed yesterday. U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein called the investigation the biggest federal probe of prison corruption in Maryland in recent memory.

Prosecutors said the gang known as Black Guerilla Family recruited prison employees and used hidden compartments in shoes to smuggle heroin, ecstasy, tobacco, cellphones and other contraband into prisons in Maryland and elsewhere.

I guess the saying should be, "Crime doesn't pay, but being in prison can have its perks."