IG Report: Bureaucratic incompetence among federal prison officials led to mob boss Whitey Bulger’s brutal beating death in 2018
The Justice Department’s inspector general has concluded that it wasn’t “malicious intent,” but rather “bureaucratic incompetence” that was responsible for mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger’s brutal beating death when prison officials transferred him to a violent West Virginia prison and housed him with rival gangsters in 2018.
The long-awaited report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that months of “staff and management performance failures; bureaucratic incompetence; and flawed, confusing, and insufficient policies and procedures” led to the decision to move the frail, wheelchair bound, 89-year old gangster to the notorious federal penitentiary at Hazelton where he was discovered dead in his cell less than 12 hours after arriving.
By the time Bulger was moved to West Virginia from a Florida prison better able to care for his cardiac condition - against medical advice - far more than 100 federal bureau prison employees were aware of the move and prison staff at Hazelton had made the inmate population aware, a violation of U.S. Bureau of Prisons policy, according to the report.
Because news of Bulger’s transfer was so wide spread, it is not possible to learn who leaked the information to the inmates, the report said..
Three Hazelton inmates - including a mob hitman from Springfield - were charged in August in connection with Bulger’s death.
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