VICTORVILLE, Calif. — Fetish filmmaker Ira Isaacs, who's been serving time in prison after being convicted on obscenity charges, was recently transferred to a federal penitentiary in Victorville, Calif.
Isaacs, 63, was convicted two years ago by a Los Angeles jury for the mail distribution of four scat and bestiality titles. In July, he turned himself in to federal authorities to begin a four-year sentence.
The Victorville facility is deemed a high-security prison that houses about 1,400 inmates who have been convicted on federal murder, drug-trafficking and espionage charges, among others.
XBIZ was unable to discern why Bureau of Prison officials chose the high-security penitentiary for Isaacs. Security categories for U.S. prisons range from minimum to low, medium and high.
The all-male correctional facility, located about 85 miles east of Los Angeles in San Bernardino County, has recently seen a rise in the number of incidences of violence, including homicide.
In the past year and a half there have been five deaths at the 10-year-old USP Victorville, including two inmates who were beaten to death in their own cells. One of the men was a former president of the Aryan Brotherhood in Ohio.
Max Hardcore, the porn personality, producer and distributor who was convicted and sentenced on obscenity charges prior to Isaacs, spent most of his time as an inmate at a low-security federal correctional facility in Anthony, Texas.
Isaacs until now has been housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, a 12-story tower overlooking the city's fabled Olvera Street and Union Station at Temple and Alameda Streets.
During the six-year case spanning three federal obscenity trials, the first two ending in mistrials, Isaacs wasn't held.
After his unsuccessful appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, he filed a request seeking to be housed in either of two low-security penitentiaries run by the federal Bureau of Prisons — Terminal Island in Long Beach, Calif., or Lompoc, a city in Santa Barbara County.
But the request wasn't honored.
Isaacs, however, was able to shave off some prison time — six months — after entering a drug-diversion program.
Isaacs, federal prisoner No. 45196-112, is scheduled to be released on Jan. 5, 2018.
