I understand your point, but what I am talking about I don't see as a cultural imperative, but a strictly and solely moral one. Murder is, generally, wrong in most moral codes, no matter how they are defined, and saying that someone should be soley judged by their place and time means that we should just send O'Brien, Prefect, and... probably Swing home, because they were abiding by, or even enforcing, their time, country and world view's laws and moral codes.

I understand the difficulties and unfairness in that, to an extent, because yes, it's difficult to teach people not to do unto others as they would have done unto themselves when they accept it as a fact that such harm can be done, and with what can be viewed as minimal punishment - which is why we, as wardens, should be more wide-ranging with punishment than just throwing someone in zero. I accept you have a point on that, but a warden killing an inmate when it was not strictly necessary makes it even more difficult. At least, when an inmate does it, you can argue that they're here to change. When a warden does it, it's implicitly accepting that this is a fine way to enforce authority.