Sean “Diddy” Combs is in for a pleasant surprise at his new prison.
After spending more than a year in Brooklyn’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center, Diddy was transferred to the low-security Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Dix in New Jersey on Thursday, October 30.
“His first days will be a dramatic change for the better,” Seton Hall Law School professor Bill Baroni, who served three months in a similar facility for his involvement in the 2013 “Bridgegate” scandal before the Supreme Court reversed his fraud conviction, exclusively tells Us Weekly. “His life will be so much easier where he is now.”
Baroni, 53, notes that Diddy, who turned 56 on Tuesday, November 4, is “going from one of the most severe prisons in America to a low-security camp that has no cells or bars.” Instead, Fort Dix, which holds more than 4,000 inmates, has dormitory units with bunk beds for 12 men in each.
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“He will go from a very regimented life in Brooklyn to one where he can work out for hours at the gym, take classes, watch TV and walk the track,” Baroni tells Us. “There are always challenges to going into prison, but he is going to a place where violence is nearly nowhere to be found. He will be safer here than at any time since he was charged.”
Baroni, who has advised people in the federal prison system since his 2019 release, thinks Diddy should make the best of his remaining time in lockup.
“The hardest part of life in federal prison is how slow time goes. The best thing to avoid that is to have a routine and stick to it,” he says. “Don’t sit around and watch TV all day. Work out, take classes, go to Bible study, walk the track. This is the time for him to really reset and be ready for the next chapter of his life, and that can be one where he is in great shape mentally, physically and spiritually.”
Baroni acknowledges that “staying positive can be hard” in prison, but “being negative is even harder.”
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“Being angry in prison is like carrying around a bag of rocks,” he tells Us. “Stay in touch with your family and the people who have stuck by you. Write a lot of letters and emails to people. Call your family every night. These are the people who are going to be there when the fence to the prison opens up and he goes home.”
After being arrested in September 2024, Diddy was found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution but acquitted of three more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion in July. The rapper, who has maintained his innocence, was sentenced to four years and two months in prison in October.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ website indicates that Diddy is scheduled to be released from Fort Dix on May 8, 2028. However, Baroni estimates that the hip-hop mogul could get out as early as June 2026 due to credits for the time he already served in Brooklyn and good behavior.
