 | THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING |
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 KEVIN CULLEN Locked-in perspectiveThe things that Sam Williams noticed most inside the grand rotunda of the Liberty Hotel were the things that were missing. The pigeons that used to fly around the Charles Street Jail aren't there anymore. Neither are the water bugs, the 4-inch creatures that marched over from the river and infested the place. The rancid, standing water that covered the first few inches of the ground floor, giving it an air of Dickensian squalor, is gone. The fencing that surrounded the tiers, which made the rotunda look like a bird cage, has been replaced by sleek panes of glass. Carved from the granite, bricks, and steel bars that until 17 years ago constituted the most unconstitutional jail in the country, the Liberty is the city's newest, poshest hotel. Sitting in the lobby among the afternoon cocktail set, 42-year-old Sam Williams may have been the only one there who had killed a man. Sipping a ginger ale, he was almost certainly the only one who had lived in the Charles Street Jail. "I'm impressed," Sam Williams said, pivoting his head to take in the grandeur of the 90-foot rotunda. "They've done quite a good job architecturally." He's less impressed with the hotel's hokey marketing scheme. There is a fine line between trendy and tacky. And with a restaurant named Clink, a bar called Alibi, and a wine list that sorts vintages by "maximum, medium, and minimum security," the Liberty is pushing the line. Aside from a few panels near the elevators that provide some historical background, there is little that would give the well-heeled guests a clue what it was like to be an inmate or a guard in the hellhole that was Charles Street. Sam Williams knows. He grew up in Roxbury and started running with the wrong crowd in his teens. By the time he was 17, he was in Charles Street, awaiting trial for stealing a shotgun in a housebreak. He spent most of the next five years there, sometimes awaiting trial for less serious offenses, finally for stabbing a guy to death in a drug deal that became a robbery. "It was a dungeon," Williams said. "The rats were huge." Williams paused, tilting his head up slightly, as classical music wafted through the lobby. "The noise never stopped. Twenty-four hours a day. A lot of the guys inside were mentally ill. People would yell and scream all night. So you couldn't ever really sleep." Charges were dropped after his first arrest, and he got out. But he went back to the same corner, the same friends. Soon he was back in Charles Street. "Guys were pleading guilty to get state sentences, just to get out of here," he said. He stepped inside the restaurant, where some of the observation cells have been preserved. "I was in one of these," he said, lightly fingering cell bars that are now ornaments for the rich. In 1973, after lawyers for the inmates sued on the grounds that the conditions violated their civil rights, federal judge W. Arthur Garrity paid an unannounced visit to the jail. He promptly ruled in the inmates' favor. But the last of the prisoners were not moved out until 1990. Sam Williams was rehabilitated long before the sordid carcass of Charles Street was. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and spent 11 years in state prison, emerging in 1996 a new man. He is chief of operations for the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry, helping kids make better decisions than he did. He also runs a program to help released prisoners transition back to the outside. "How much did all this cost?" he asked, as he scanned the rotunda one last time. Told it was $150 million, he shook his head and exhaled in something of a whistle. "That's a lot of money to put into a building," he said. But that was someone else's decision. "Even a jail can move on," Sam Williams said. "Same with people." Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com. |
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