I came across this from Atrios:
Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff is being held in a super-max wing of the Manhattan federal lockup - a unit so tough it drives hardened criminals mad, the Daily News has learned.
It’s known as 10 South.
Located on the 10th floor of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the high-security wing has housed the city’s toughest mobsters and most bloodthirsty terrorists.
(…)
On 10 South, the 70-year-old Madoff is treated more like a lab rat than a vaunted Wall Street financier once entrusted with billions of investment dollars.
The lights burn 24 hours a day, and an inmate’s every move is caught on video. Madoff gets just 60 minutes a day outside his 8-by-8-foot cell - in wrist shackles.
Windows are blacked out so disoriented inmates can’t catch even a glimpse of the world outside.
What passes for food is slipped through a narrow slit in a stainless steel door that fronts a spartan cell - cold in winter, scorching hot in summer.
No interaction is permitted between inmates or guards. Only a ranking officer is allowed to remove a prisoner from his tiny cell.
Lawyer visits are few and far between. Reading material is almost nonexistent.
(…)
The squalid conditions are enough to make blood-stained tough guys cry - never mind a pampered ex-billionaire.
And, like not-Atrios, I don't think anyone should be treated like this.
I often make the mistake of assuming universality for my own thoughts, so maybe I'm wrong here, maybe people are happy to see him suffer. But, suffering gives me no pleasure, no matter how evil the motherfucker suffering is. What I think I want is remorse. And I suspect that's what a lot of people want. And that is something that cannot be forced.
If someone bigger and meaner than you punches you in the face, it might make you feel better to have your friends hold his hands behind his back so you can punch him back. But that won't make him feel bad for punching you, it just makes him feel bad for getting hit (and humiliated). In the meantime, you'll still have your black eye or fat lip and probably a good helping of guilt too for thinking that you can stop a bully by being a bully.
