Even the Vile

On providing a filament of hope for the men and women in the horror of long-term solitary confinement.

In July of 2019 Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera was sentenced to life in prison plus thirty years to ensure that he would spend the rest of his life incarcerated.

If Guzmán doesn’t immediately come to mind, know that he was the notorious drug lord of the Sinaloa Cartel, directly responsible for countless assassinations, mass killings and beheadings. He famously escaped from prisons in Mexico, including an escape in 2015 through an elaborate tunnel dug beneath his prison. Netflix created a series glorifying him called “El Chapo.”

Given his notoriety, his sentencing was highly publicized. Generally speaking, I have next to zero interest in celebrated criminals or their stories, but I caught a news story the night of his sentencing that haunts me.

It might not have been one of the prosecutors that promised it, but it was someone with direct control over the man’s penal fate. Grandstanding or otherwise, this person promised that El Chapo would be buried so far down in the hole he’d never s…