How has Bill Cosby spent his first week in a maximum security Pennsylvania prison?
According to TMZ, he's been easing in by getting to know and befriending prison staff, talking to his wife, Camille, on the phone every day, being guided around the facility's grounds and taking his meals privately.
The disgraced comedian, 81 — who on Sept. 25 was sentenced to three to 10 years in state prison for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in his home 14 years ago — starts each day with breakfast in his cell, his rep, Andrew Wyatt, tells TMZ.
Cosby does not yet have a cellmate at Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution Phoenix in Collegeville, a 3,830-bed facility that just opened in July.
"We're told from there, Cosby is escorted through Phoenix by a personal guide — Bill's legally blind — to use the prison's library, yard and other facilities," TMZ writes. "Dinner and lunch are either in his cell or an open room."
Since Cosby is still being evaluated — he's meeting with medical, psychological and records staff during their first few weeks of incarceration to determine a plan for his time behind bars — he's not yet been integrated with the general population, though Corrections Secretary John Wetzel explained in a press release last week that "the long-term goal is for him to be placed in the general population to receive the programming required during his incarceration."
But since Cosby is still on his own, "he spends a lot of his time chatting with prison staff," TMZ writes, adding that his rep has said how the former star of "The Cosby Show" has told him many times how well the prison staff has been treating him and how respectful they have been.
As for his calls with his wife, they last "only for a few minutes" and focus on his plans to appeal his conviction — Cosby still maintains his innocence in this case and has also denied dozens of other women's claims that he raped or sexually assaulted them through the decades.
Cosby will be able to have visitors as soon as his intake period winds down in a few days.
Meanwhile, the man once dubbed "America's Dad" — who Judge Steven O'Neill branded a "sexually violent predator" during his sentencing — will soon learn about what type of sex offender treatment he'll receive while he's behind bars, which is a requirement of his sentence.
TMZ previously reported that the program he'll be assigned to is called "Responsible Living: A Sex Offender Treatment Program" and while it's something all convicted sex offenders must go through, how far into the program Cosby gets depends on how much of a danger experts decide he poses.
The program has seven phases, reports TMZ: Phase 1: Responsibility taking; Phase 2: Behavioral techniques; Phase 3: Emotional well-being; Phase 4: Victim empathy; Phase 5: Anger management; Phase 6: Sex education; Phase 7: Relapse prevention.
He'll be evaluated then, TMZ explains, "If he falls into a moderate-high or a high-risk category, he'll have to complete all seven phases of the sex offender program. If he falls into a low or low-moderate risk category, he's just required to knock out 'Responsibility taking,' 'Sex education' and 'Relapse prevention.'"