Prison officials found notorious mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger dead in his cell last Tuesday, the apparent victim of a prison murder. Some pronounced this a fitting end to the saga of a man whom many blame for innumerable grisly deaths. We cannot share in their satisfaction.
Whether because of the mythology told in prison movies or hard-hearted attitudes toward the convicted, American society still accepts torture as the expected, even excusable, consequence of incarceration. Beatings, shivvings, rapes and prison murder are the subject of jokes, not outrage at the carnage taking place in government-run institutions. Violent, uncontrolled inmates are not the only problem in U.S. prisons. Prison staff are sometimes the torturers. Too many inmates are still locked away in solitary confinement in tiny cells for 23 hours per day.
It is all too easy to dismiss these questions as unnecessary because Bulger was an evil man. Yet his death was not justice but a betrayal of it. Bulger was sentenced to life in prison, not to death.
The U.S. justice system is not always perfect in matching punishments to crimes. But the alternative is the justice of the mob – a ratification of Bulger’s life work rather than the repudiation it deserved.
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