Milken Will Finish His Custody Term at Home

A month after taking up residence at a ramshackle halfway house in a seedy Hollywood neighborhood, former junk bond financier Michael Milken has been allowed to return to his posh Encino home.

State prison officials said that moving Milken into its home confinement program Tuesday was a fairly common step for prisoners nearing the end of their terms. It allows Milken to live at home with his family instead of at the Vineland Re-Entry Community Correctional Center, where he had lived since leaving prison Jan. 3.

Milken had served 22 months at federal prison in Pleasanton and paid $1.1 billion in fines after pleading guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud in 1990.

Under the terms of the home confinement program, halfway house staff members will contact Milken by phone at random times during the day and through personal visits at least twice a week, to make sure he is either at home or at his attorney’s office, where he is paid to do research.

Milken must visit the halfway house twice a week, and will continue to submit to routine urine testing for drug and alcohol abuse. His 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew will stay in place.

Daniel Dunne, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said the bureau uses home confinement both because it saves taxpayers money and helps to ease prisoners’ transition back into society. But while all prisoners are considered for home confinement programs, many of those returning to a less hospitable environment than Milken cannot participate.

“It depends upon security concerns and each inmate’s individual resources,” Dunne said. “Some people have greater resources than others.”

Michael Askew, for example, a convicted drug dealer who was at the federal prison in Pleasanton with Milken and later met up with him at the halfway house, said he won’t take part in the home confinement program because he has no home to go to.

Still, Askew, 45, bears Milken no ill will for their disparate circumstances.

“He’s just a regular person,” Askew said. “He did his chores like everyone else. He’d come home, watch TV with us and talk. He was nice to everyone.”

Milken is scheduled to be released from custody March 2. He must then perform 1,800 hours of community service each year for three years.