Basciano I don't think should be locked for 23 hours, since one of those he killed wanted to kidnap his son, but some mob guys like Casso, Genovese, Anastasia or Avellino would have deserved it. But life (not just the mafia life, I mean life as a general concept) is organized in such a way that the worse an individual is, less probability there is that they will be treated harshly like they deserve. Look at the death penalty: the ones executed are almost always small fry, tools, even serial killers are executed only because they don't have connections. The big fishes always get away with plea bargains and lesser sentences.

Just to make another comparison, even though it's not USA: in Russia they put in prison Khodorkovsky out of all oligarchs because he was the one who wasn't as bad as others, has stolen less and tried to be involved in politics against the government, while the ones who are "swimming in blood" like Sergey Mikhailov get off the hook.

I made this comparison because Basciano isn't the most violent mafia boss ever, yet they made an example of harsh treatment out of him compared to all others. Even Scarfo has less that a life sentence and with some luck Sonny Franzese's style maybe will manage to outlive it.

A question: is the book about Basciano any good? I don't know much about him apart from the usual stuff from the articles and those 2 murders he was convicted for. Is it true to the crime chronicles involving him?