Henry Hill, Goodfella Turned Prisoner

Goodfellas is, by far, one of my favorite movies of all time, tying with Evil Dead. I could go on and on as to why, but we all know how anti-gang culture I am, so I'll just mention that it has nothing to do with that. I don't think Goodfellas glamorizes gangsters at all; quite the opposite, I think it brilliantly shows the eventual outcome of such criminals: prison or death, and sometimes both.

At any rate, the movie was based on Nicholas Pileggi's book, which chronicled the life of one Henry Hill, as portrayed by Ray Liotta. Hill was a real man and many of the situations depicted in the film actually happened. Hill went into the Federal Witness Protection Program for years to avoid execution by his former Mafia associates, but then left/was ejected from the program, set up his own website, and attempted to become a professional chef.

In September of last year, Hill was sentenced to 180 days in prison for violating his plea agreement by attempting to purchase methamphetamine.

And while I wanted to blog about this because I just found out about it and the film is one of my favorites, it also reminded me of Sammy "The Bull" Gravano's own legal troubles after defecting from the mob - both were involved in drugs, which got them in trouble after they had supposedly "gone straight." It makes you wonder just how effective such a program is.

I understand that the Witness Protection Program can be very effective in hiding certain people, but it seems a truism that some people are simply bad seeds. While their testimony is needed and effective for getting other criminals off the streets, shouldn't they be put out to pasture somehow? I'm not sure what would be effective or even if my suggestion has any merit, but it just seems like too many bad people are able to use the Program to effectively escape justice without ever changing their ways...