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A powerful critique of mass incarceration by the people who have experienced itInside Knowledge is the first book to examine the American prison system through the eyes of those who are trapped within it. Drawing from the writings collected in the American Prison Writing Archive, Doran Larson deftly illustrates how mass incarceration does less to contain any harm perpetrated by convicted people than to spread and perpetuate harm among their families and communities.Inside Knowledge makes a powerful argument that America's prisons not only degrade and debilitate their wards but also defeat the prison's cardinal missions of rehabilitation, containment, deterrence, and even meaningful retribution. If prisons are places where convicted people are sent to learn a lesson, then imprisoned people are the ones who know just what American prisons actually teach. At once profound and devastating, Inside Knowledge is an invaluable resource for those interested in addressing mass incarceration in America.

This book is an eye-opening look at the American prison system and how confinement affects the capability of being successful while incarcerated as well as when released. It includes popular tweets as seen on @cellsecrets, which has a large, dedicated following of people interested in reform of the current injustice system. The collection of essays and tweets will spark discussion and provide classrooms and individuals with a first-person account of confinement and its effects.

Far more than a building of brick and mortar, the prison relies upon gruesome stories circulated as commercial media to legitimize its institutional reproduction. Perhaps no medium has done more in recent years to both produce and intervene in such stories than television. This unapologetically interdisciplinary work presents a series of investigations into some of the most influential and innovative treatments of American mass incarceration to hit our screens in recent decades. Looking beyond celebratory accolades, Lee A. Flamand argues that we cannot understand the eagerness of influential programs such as OZ, The Wire, Orange Is the New Black, 13th, and Queen Sugar to integrate the sensibilities of prison ethnography, urban sociology, identity politics activism, and even Black feminist theory into their narrative structures without understanding how such critical postures relate to the cultural aspirations and commercial goals of a quickly evolving TV industry and the most deeply ingrained continuities of American storytelling practices.

Prison Life Writing is the first full-length study of one of the most controversial genres in American literature. By exploring the complicated relationship between life writing and institutional power, this book reveals the overlooked aesthetic innovations of incarcerated people and the surprising literary roots of the U.S. prison system. Simon Rolston observes that the autobiographical work of incarcerated people is based on a conversion narrative, a story arc that underpins the concept of prison rehabilitation and that sometimes serves the interests of the prison system, rather than those on the inside. Yet many imprisoned people rework the conversion narrative the way they repurpose other objects in prison. Like a radio motor retooled into a tattoo gun, the conversion narrative has been redefined by some authors for subversive purposes, including questioning the ostensible emancipatory role of prison writing, critiquing white supremacy, and broadly reimagining autobiographical discourse. An interdisciplinary work that brings life writing scholarship into conversation with prison studies and law and literature studies, Prison Life Writing theorizes how life writing works in prison, explains literature's complicated entanglements with institutional power, and demonstrates the political and aesthetic innovations of one of America's most fascinating literary genres.

The Routledge Handbook on American Prisons is an authoritative volume that provides an overview of the state of U.S. prisons and synthesizes the research on the many facets of the prison system. The United States is exceptional in its use of incarceration as punishment. It not only has the largest prison population in the world, but also the highest per-capita incarceration rate. Research and debate about mass incarceration continues to grow, with mounting bipartisan agreement on the need for criminal justice reform. Divided into four sections (Prisons: Security, Operations and Administration; Types of Offenders and Populations; Living and Dying in Prison; and Release, Reentry, and Reform), the volume explores the key issues fundamental to understanding the U.S. prison system, including the characteristics of facilities; inmate risk assessment and classification, prison administration and employment, for-profit prisons, special populations, overcrowding, prison health care, prison violence, the special circumstances of death row prisoners, collateral consequences of incarceration, prison programming, and parole. The final section examines reform efforts and ideas, and offers suggestions for future research and attention.With contributions from leading correctional scholars, this book is a valuable resource for scholars with an interest in U.S. prisons and the issues surrounding them. It is structured to serve scholars and graduate students studying corrections, penology, institutional corrections, and other related topics.

A “profound, sometimes hilarious, often heartbreaking” (The New York Times) view of prison life, as told by currently and formerly incarcerated people, from the co-creators and co-hosts of the Peabody- and Pulitzer-nominated podcast Ear Hustle“A must-read for fans of the legendary podcast and all those who seek to understand crime, punishment, and mass incarceration in America.”—Piper Kerman, author of Orange Is the New BlackWhen Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods met, Nigel was a photography professor volunteering with the Prison University Project and Earlonne was serving thirty-one years to life at California's San Quentin State Prison. Initially drawn to each other by their shared interest in storytelling, neither had podcast production experience when they decided to enter Radiotopia's contest for new shows... and won. Using the prize for seed money, Nigel and Earlonne launched Ear Hustle, named after the prison term for “eavesdropping.” It was the first podcast created and produced entirely within prison and would go on to be heard millions of times worldwide, garner Peabody and Pulitzer award nominations, and help earn Earlonne his freedom when his sentence was commuted in 2018. In This Is Ear Hustle, Nigel and Earlonne share their own stories of how they came to San Quentin, how they created their phenomenally popular podcast amid extreme limitations, and what has kept them collaborating season after season. They present new stories, all with the same insight, balance, and rapport that distinguish the podcast. In an era when more than two million people are incarcerated across the United States—a number that grows by 600,000 annually—Nigel and Earlonne explore the full and often surprising realities of prison life. With characteristic candor and humor, their moving portrayals include unexpected moments of self-discovery, unlikely alliances, inspirational resilience, and ingenious work-arounds.One personal narrative at a time, framed by Nigel's and Earlonne's distinct perspectives, This Is Ear Hustle reveals the complexity of life for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people while illuminating the shared experiences of humanity that unite us all.

Tiyo Attallah Salah-El died in 2018 on “Slow Death Row” while serving a life sentence in a Pennsylvania prison. He was a man with a dizzying array of talents and vocations: author, scholar, teacher, musician, and activist: he was the founder of the Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons. He was also, as is apparent from the letters written over a decade and half to his friend Paul Alan Smith that make up this book, an extraordinarily eloquent correspondent. Tiyo's missives present a vivid picture of the tribulations faced by those incarcerated, especially the nearly 60% who are non-white: habitual racism, arbitrary lockdowns, brutal beatings and hospitalizations, stifling heat and bitter cold. Here too are descriptions of Tiyo's individual struggles with cancer, aging, and the sirens of personal demons. Tiyo's refusal to succumb to such hardships is evident in dispatches that are generous, philosophical and often laugh-out-loud funny. Through them we learn of his many friendships, including those with the historian Howard Zinn, a range of activist/advocate supporters on the outside, and two fellow people in prison who were leaders of the Black liberation group MOVE. At a time when the appalling racial bias of America's police and criminal justice system is under the spotlight as never before, Pen Pal is both a vital intervention and moving portrait of someone whose physical confinement could never extinguish an extraordinary free spirit.

In the final decades of the 20th century, a confluence of factors precipitated a policy change in the criminal justice arena that led to unprecedented growth. This growth translated into the criminalization, sentencing and incarceration of tens of thousands of marginalized people in the United States. These factors are considered in Behind American Prison Policy and Population Growth: An Inside Account. Tales are told of the increased prison population that necessitated a continuous unfolding of prison construction projects, rehabbing abandoned state hospitals and private prisons, all with the aim of more and more secure accommodations. During this time, the author was a participant/observer at all correctional security levels, treatment and medical facilities and personnel training in this system. His roles over the years included increased responsibility and regular direct contact with incarcerated individuals in on-the-line or line supervisor positions. The narrative is enhanced by the author's background as social science scholar. This is a unique perspective, documenting a historic upturn in long-term detention addressing crime and disorder. These overarching realities produced struggle across all participants, including clients, staff, consultants and visitors. Their stories of being swept up in the constant demand for increasing capacity offer compelling background to the consequences of visceral responses guiding criminal justice.

After years of hedonism in the literary life, journalist Brandon M. Stickney is caught in an opiate epidemic drug sting and sentenced to prison. Surrounded by society's most troubled individuals and hostile guards, Stickney faces his addiction and mental illness behind the razor wire. Searching for answers, he befriends four inmates and a guard who help change his life. Haunted by severe cravings, nights of mania, and threatened by prison's evils, he clings to hope, learning that recovery is possible, even in the darkest of places. Startling yet humorous, The Five People You'll Meet in Prison is part memoir, part exposé on the largest of America's industries: prison. A memorable real-life rendering of the anti-hero's journey.

A fascinating look at the social life of women in prison. Intended to shine the light on prison social life in the face of allegations of all sorts of misconduct and deviant behaviors.

A Man Who Found the Meaning of Life in a Solitary Cell...Who Fought His Way Up from Rock Bottom to Win Wealth and Success! Bill Sands was doing three consecutive life terms in San Quentin by his nineteenth birthday. He admitted that he was on his way to committing murder if he hadn't been stopped. Thirty years later he was a successful businessman, a famous speaker and the author of a bestselling book. Along the way he had been a pilot, a boxer, a comedian, and a diamond miner. Bill Sands died in 1969, but he left behind as his legacy this exciting story of his life so that others could benefit from his incredible experiences. Bill Sands was a devoted follower of Napoleon Hill, an author and advisor to two Presidents who devoted his life to creating a formula for success. This formula consisted of seventeen principles that anyone can learn. Here in Sands'bestselling life story, he demonstrates the power of applying Hill's formula for success. This edition contains a special introduction explaining exactly which of Hill's principles Sands used—or abused. My Shadow Ran Fast is the incredible story of a remarkable man—an ex-convict actively engaged in prison reform work and in the rehabilitation of criminals. Learn how to unleash your power to control your life just as Bill Sands did. Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, you can achieve!'An excellent portrayal of a very mixed-up and dangerous young man. I highly recommend this book.'-CLINTON T. DUFFY, FORMER WARDEN OF SAN QUENTIN PRISON

An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.orgNew York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 • One of President Barack Obama's favorite books of 2018 • Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize • Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism • Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award • A New York Times Notable Book A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history.In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still.The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison's sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone. A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.

From broken-window policing in Detroit to prison-building in Appalachia, exploring the expansion of the carceral state and its oppressive social relations into everyday lifePrison Land offers a geographic excavation of the prison as a set of social relations—including property, work, gender, and race—enacted across various landscapes of American life. Prisons, Brett Story shows, are more than just buildings of incarceration bound to cycles of crime and punishment. Instead, she investigates the production of carceral power at a range of sites, from buses to coalfields and from blighted cities to urban financial hubs, to demonstrate how the organization of carceral space is ideologically and materially grounded in racial capitalism.Story's critically acclaimed film The Prison in Twelve Landscapes is based on the same research that informs this book. In both, Story takes an expansive view of what constitutes contemporary carceral space, interrogating the ways in which racial capitalism is reproduced and for which police technologies of containment and control are employed. By framing the prison as a set of social relations, Prison Land forces us to confront the production of new carceral forms that go well beyond the prison system. In doing so, it profoundly undermines both conventional ideas of prisons as logical responses to the problem of crime and attachment to punishment as the relevant measure of a transformed criminal justice system.

The contributors to Captivating Technology examine how carceral technologies such as electronic ankle monitors and predictive-policing algorithms are being deployed to classify and coerce specific populations and whether these innovations can be appropriated and reimagined for more liberatory ends.

Your knowledge of Eugene Victor Debs'activity during and since the First World War will not be complete until you read this book. It includes his speech at Canton, Ohio, that brought about his arrest; his fearless address to the jury; his daring statement to the court, and excellent account of the trial; and a short history of the Socialist Party's Amnesty Campaign.“While still an inmate of the United States Penitentiary at Atlanta, Georgia, the suggestion was made to me by interested publishers that upon my release I write a series of articles describing my prison experience. The suggestion, coming from various sources, appealed to me for the reason that I saw in it an opportunity to give the general public certain information in regard to the prison, based upon my personal observation and experience, that I hoped might result in some beneficial changes in the management of prisons and in the treatment of their inmates.”—Eugene Victor Debs, Introduction

This book provides the first complete, literal English translation of Alexis de Tocqueville's and Gustave de Beaumont's first edition of On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application to France. The work contains a critical comparison of two competing American penitentiary disciplines known as the Auburn and Philadelphia systems, an evaluation of whether American penitentiaries can successfully work in France, a detailed description of Houses of Refuge as the first juvenile detention centers, and an argument against penal colonization. The work provides valuable insights into understanding Tocqueville as a statesman, as well as a comparative look at civic engagement in early American and French penal reform movements. The Translator's Introduction provides historical context for understanding Tocqueville's work in French penal reform and the major themes of the report. The book thus fills a void in Tocquevillian studies and extrapolates the roots of American and French criminal justice systems in the nineteenth century.

This book presents an interpretive analysis of the major themes and purpose of Alexis de Tocqueville's and Gustave de Beaumont's first work, On the Penitentiary System, thereby offering new insights into Tocqueville as a moderate liberal statesman. The book explores Tocqueville's thinking on penitentiaries as the best possible solution to recidivism, his approach to colonial imperialism, and his arguments on moral reformation of prisoners through a close reading of Tocqueville's first published text. The unifying political concept of all three discussions is Tocqueville's underlying concern to pursue moderation between institutional and imaginative extremes in order to maintain liberal values. In both thinking moderately and advocating for moderate political action, Tocqueville's On the Penitentiary System renews an emphasis on the importance of civic engagement and the balance between philosophy and praxis.

The voices of those experiencing life in the long term are often not heard. This collection of essays and personal stories from the people most impacted by long-term incarceration in Statesville Prison bring light to the crisis of mass incarceration and the human cost of excessive sentencing. Compelling, moving narratives from those most affected by the prison industrial complex make a compelling case that death by incarceration is cruel and unusual punishment. Implemented in the 1990's and 2000's harsh sentencing policies, commonly labeled “tough on crime,” became a bipartisan political agenda. These policies had real impacts on families and communities, particularly as they caused the removal of many non-white and poor individuals from cities like Chicago. The Long Term brings into the light what has previously been hidden, a counter-narrative to the tough on crime agenda and an urgent plea for a more humane criminal justice system. The book is a critical contribution to the current debate around challenging the mass incarceration and ending mandatory sentencing, especially for non-violent offenders.

Synthesizing recent scholarship in law and the social sciences on criminal sentencing and corrections, this book provides a thorough, balanced, and accessible survey of the major policy issues in these fields of persistent public interest and political debate.After three decades of explosive growth, the American incarceration rate is impracticably high. Drawing on leading research in law and the social sciences, this book covers a range of topics in sentencing and corrections in America in a manner that is accessible and engaging for general readers.Tackling high-level issues in the criminal justice system, it outlines the scale and causes of mass incarceration in the United States. To complement this, it details the roles and relative power of judges and prosecutors, the severity of punishment for drug offenders and white-collar offenders, the abuse of prisoners and the enforcement of prisoner rights, and repeat offending by released prisoners. Readers will better understand the challenges that come with a high incarceration rate, such as the management of mental illness in the criminal justice system, the management of sex offenders, and the impact of parental incarceration on children. Looking ahead, this timely resource also considers prospects for reducing current incarceration levels, the availability and effectiveness of alternatives to incarceration, and the future of capital punishment.

When the tough-on-crime politics of the 1980s overcrowded state prisons, private companies saw potential profit in building and operating correctional facilities. Today more than a hundred thousand of the 1.5 million incarcerated Americans are held in private prisons in twenty-nine states and federal corrections. Private prisons are criticized for making money off mass incarceration—to the tune of $5 billion in annual revenue. Based on Lauren-Brooke Eisen's work as a prosecutor, journalist, and attorney at policy think tanks, Inside Private Prisons blends investigative reportage and quantitative and historical research to analyze privatized corrections in America.From divestment campaigns to boardrooms to private immigration-detention centers across the Southwest, Eisen examines private prisons through the eyes of inmates, their families, correctional staff, policymakers, activists, Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, undocumented immigrants, and the executives of America's largest private prison corporations. Private prisons have become ground zero in the anti-mass-incarceration movement. Universities have divested from these companies, political candidates hesitate to accept their campaign donations, and the Department of Justice tried to phase out its contracts with them. On the other side, impoverished rural towns often try to lure the for-profit prison industry to build facilities and create new jobs. Neither an endorsement or a demonization, Inside Private Prisons details the complicated and perverse incentives rooted in the industry, from mandatory bed occupancy to vested interests in mass incarceration. If private prisons are here to stay, how can we fix them? This book is a blueprint for policymakers to reform practices and for concerned citizens to understand our changing carceral landscape.

More than two million people are incarcerated in America's prisons--one in nine is serving a life sentence. Mass long-term imprisonment devours state budgets, adversely affects community well-being and skews our collective moral compass. This study examines the human costs of keeping the convicted out of sight, out of mind. Beginning in 1994, the author began recording the personal stories of 50 incarcerated felons--17 of them were still in prison 20 years later. The men candidly discuss what it means to commit a serious crime and to be confined for perhaps the remainder of their lives. Their stories are balanced by conversations with correctional officers, prison administrators, chaplains and parole board members. The author identifies circumstances that ruin some prisoners and save others and presents insights for possible improvements in the criminal justice system.

The United States incarcerates far more people than any other country in the world, at rates nearly ten times higher than other liberal democracies. Indeed, while the U.S. is home to 5 percent of the world's population, it contains nearly 25 percent of its prisoners. But the extent of American cruelty goes beyond simply locking people up. At every stage of the criminal justice process - plea bargaining, sentencing, prison conditions, rehabilitation, parole, and societal reentry - the U.S. is harsher and more punitive than other comparable countries. In Unusually Cruel, Marc Morjé Howard argues that the American criminal justice and prison systems are exceptional - in a truly shameful way. Although other scholars have focused on the internal dynamics that have produced this massive carceral system, Howard provides the first sustained comparative analysis that shows just how far the U.S. lies outside the norm of established democracies. And, by highlighting how other countries successfully apply less punitive and more productive policies, he provides plausible solutions to addressing America's criminal justice quagmire.

Can privatization really help solve America's prison problems? A mental health professional tells a compelling story of suicidal inmates and mistreated inmates, with staff working overtime without compensation while frustration grows.

Hard Time: A Fresh Look at Understanding and Reforming the Prison, 4th Edition, is a revised and updated version of the highly successful text addressing the origins, evolution, and promise of America's penal system. Draws from both ethnographic and professional material, and situates the prison experience within both contemporary and historical contexts Features first person accounts from male and female inmates and staff, revealing what it's actually like to live and work in prison Includes all-new chapters on prison reform and on supermax correctional facilities, including the latest research on confinement, long-term segregation, and death row Explores a wide range of topics, including the nature of prison as punishment; prisoner personality types and coping strategies; gang violence; prison officers'custodial duties; and psychological, educational, and work programs Develops policy recommendations for the future based on qualitative and quantitative research and evidence-based initiatives

Get a frontline look at the field of corrections with CORRECTIONS TODAY, 4th Edition. This briefer, visual, paperback alternative to hardback Introduction to Corrections texts is ideal for readers who are interested in real-world concepts and applications. It examines the field of corrections through the lens of students -- perhaps like you -- who are giving serious thought to a career in the field or are working in corrections while seeking an advanced degree in order to be promoted or switch job paths. Updated with new professional profiles and insightful coverage of restorative justice, special offender populations, the use of private prisons, and many other timely topics, the fourth edition offers a practical, engaging, career-focused, and authoritative introduction to corrections.

Twenty-four hours is a lot of time in prison, and here is a moment to moment guide of how each one goes by.A Day in Prison shows what life is like for prisoners from morning roll call to lights out. It tracks the many ins and outs of prison culture and provides a comprehensive look into the dynamics that define inmates'daily interactions with each other, prison guards, and prison administrators. It gives a full sense of the challenges—small and large—presented to inmates as they try to survive each day.The book is structured like an actual day in prison, hour by hour, tracking where in the prison a prisoner would most likely be and what they would most likely be doing. It brings a clear sense of the unique environment that is a prison and makes sense of it for the reader, step-by-step. Based in the author's own experience, being incarcerated for eleven years, it is as realistic a guide to life in prison as any reader could have.

The trial of Angela Davis is remembered as one of America's most historic political trials, and no one can tell the story better than Davis herself. Opening with a letter from James Baldwin to Angela, and including contributions from numerous radicals and commentators such as Black Panthers George Jackson, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Erica Huggins, this book is not only an account of Davis's incarceration and the struggles surrounding it, but also perhaps the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the prison system of the United States and the figure embodied in Davis's arrest and imprisonment-the political prisoner. Since the book was written, the carceral system in the US has grown from strength to strength, with more of its black population behind bars than ever before. The scathing analysis of the role of prison and the policing of black populations offered by Davis and her comrades in this astonishing volume remains as relevant today as the day it was published.

Prison Industrial Complex For Beginners is a graphic narrative project that attempts to distill the fundamental components of what scholars, activists, and artists have identified as the Mass Incarceration movement in the United States.Since the early 1990s, activist critics of the US prison system have marked its emergence as a “complex” in a manner comparable to how President Eisenhower described the Military Industrial Complex. Like its institutional “cousin,” the Prison Industrial Complex features a critical combination of political ideology, far-reaching federal policy, and the neo-liberal directive to privatize institutions traditionally within the purview of the government. The result is that corporations have capital incentives to capture and contain human bodies.The Prison Industrial Complex relies on the “law and order” ideology fomented by President Nixon and developed at least partially in response to the unrest generated through the Civil Rights Movement. It is (and has been) enhanced and emboldened via the US “war on drugs,” a slate of policies that by any account have failed to do anything except normalize the warehousing of nonviolent substance abusers in jails and prisons that serve more as criminal training centers then as redemptive spaces for citizens who might re-enter society successfully.Prison Industrial Complex For Beginners is a primer for how these issues emerged and how our awareness of the systems at work in mass incarceration might be the very first step in reforming an institution responsible for some of our most egregious contemporary civil rights violations.

'The POW's of our war on drugs reside in state and federal prisons across this land. Depending on sources cited, the current toll is anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 million, wasted lives institutionalized often for minor offenses that should never have been criminalized in the first place... sending the transgressor back into the community without the skills and attitudes necessary to build a future is a futile endeavor... Perhaps we would be better served to send a war on drugs POW to college considering the dollar costs for annual incarceration often equal or exceed, a year in our university system.'Rich Moreland, Adjunct Professor of History

Key Issues in Corrections critically analyzes the most important challenges affecting the correctional system in the USA, offering a no-nonsense explanation of the problems of correctional officers, correctional managers, prisoners, and the public.

Incarcerated Interactions: A Theory-Driven Analysis of Applied Prison Communication is an innovative, applied edited book that uses core interdisciplinary social science theories to analyze and describe the social psychology and sociology of communicative interactions amongst incarcerated individuals. Beginning with the fundamentals of human interactions, this edited volume allows scholars across a variety of disciplines (such as criminology, sociology, communication studies, social psychology, anthropology, and economics) to become familiar with and apply the core principles and the requisite terminology of human communication within a criminological context. Each of the four sections of the text not only build upon the knowledge structures of previous chapters, but also function as stand-alone analyses and/or applications of extant scholarship within essential contexts. From a general discussion of core social science theory to the specific application of that theory in a range of scholarly contexts, this book addresses relevant issues such as mental illness and wellness, the gendered experience of inmates, recidivism rates, violence, the criminogenic effect of incarceration and the large-scale implications of prison gangs and their associated cultural influence, to name a few.

The most punitive era in American history reached its apex in the 1990s, but the trend has reversed in recent years. Smart on Crime: The Struggle to Build a Better American Penal System examines the factors causing this dramatic turnaround. It relates and echoes the increasing need and desire on the part of actors in the American government system to construct a penal system that is more rational and humane.Author Garrick L. Percival points out that the prison boom did not naturally emerge as a governmental response to increasing crime rates. Instead, political forces actively built and shaped the growth of a more aggressive and populated penal system. He is optimistic that the shifting political forces surrounding crime and punishment can now reform the system, explaining how current political actors can craft more constructive and just policies and programs. The book shows how rationality and humanitarianism lead to a penal system that imprisons fewer people, does less harm to the lives of individual offenders and those close to them, and is less expensive to maintain.The book presents empirical data to concretely demonstrate what is working and what is not in today's penal system. It closely examines policies and practices in Texas, Ohio, and California as comparative illustrations on what progress has been made or needs to be made in penal systems across the United States. The book includes a comprehensive discussion of highlighted issues, and relates more than two dozen interviews with pivotal political actors who clarify why there is a major shift underway in the American penal system. Their insights reveal paths that can be taken to improve the current penal system.

A major reappraisal of crime and punishment in AmericaThe huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few defenders, yet reforms to reduce the numbers of those incarcerated have been remarkably modest. Meanwhile, an ever-widening carceral state has sprouted in the shadows, extending its reach far beyond the prison gate. It sunders families and communities and reworks conceptions of democracy, rights, and citizenship—posing a formidable political and social challenge. In Caught, Marie Gottschalk examines why the carceral state remains so tenacious in the United States. She analyzes the shortcomings of the two dominant penal reform strategies—one focused on addressing racial disparities, the other on seeking bipartisan, race-neutral solutions centered on reentry, justice reinvestment, and reducing recidivism.With a new preface evaluating the effectiveness of recent proposals to reform mass incarceration, Caught offers a bracing appraisal of the politics of penal reform.

Bedingt durch eine Vielzahl von Faktoren, wie wachsende Gefangenenzahlen, überfüllte Haftanstalten und steigende Vollzugskosten sind in den USA in den vergangenen zwanzig Jahren privat geführte Strafvollzugsanstalten entstanden. Heute geht man von einem Anteil von etwa 5% privater Haftplätze im Strafvollzugssystem aus. Auch in Deutschland sind zunehmend Privatisierungstendenzen im Bereich der Sozialkontrolle zu verzeichnen. Dieses Buch befasst sich einerseits mit den Faktoren, die in den USA einer Privatisierung Vorschub geleistet haben und untersucht andererseits parallele Entwicklungen in Deutschland. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer Privatisierung im Strafvollzug in Deutschland werden unter rechtlichen Gesichtspunkten ausgelotet und vor dem Hintergrund eines sich wandelnden Staatsverständnisses diskutiert.

The huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few defenders today, yet reforms to reduce the number of people in U.S. jails and prisons have been remarkably modest. Meanwhile, a carceral state has sprouted in the shadows of mass imprisonment, extending its reach far beyond the prison gate. It includes not only the country's vast archipelago of jails and prisons but also the growing range of penal punishments and controls that lie in the never-never land between prison and full citizenship, from probation and parole to immigrant detention, felon disenfranchisement, and extensive lifetime restrictions on sex offenders. As it sunders families and communities and reworks conceptions of democracy, rights, and citizenship, this ever-widening carceral state poses a formidable political and social challenge.In this book, Marie Gottschalk examines why the carceral state, with its growing number of outcasts, remains so tenacious in the United States. She analyzes the shortcomings of the two dominant penal reform strategies—one focused on addressing racial disparities, the other on seeking bipartisan, race-neutral solutions centered on reentry, justice reinvestment, and reducing recidivism.In this bracing appraisal of the politics of penal reform, Gottschalk exposes the broader pathologies in American politics that are preventing the country from solving its most pressing problems, including the stranglehold that neoliberalism exerts on public policy. She concludes by sketching out a promising alternative path to begin dismantling the carceral state.

Correctional services—which includes salaries and benefits for correctional officers—is the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Bureau of Prisons'(BOP) largest operational cost, and BOP has undertaken a number of initiatives to reduce costs. This book describes BOP's major costs and actions to achieve savings; assesses the extent to which BOP has mechanisms to identify additional efficiencies; and describes potential changes within and outside of BOP's authority that might reduce costs. This book also provides an overview of the federal prison population buildup, policy changes, issues and options of the BOP.

How realistic are media portrayals of radical,'homegrown'Islamic terrorists filling US prisons? With prisons a fertile recruiting ground for Islam, what impact does the religion have on life behind bars? Muslims in US Prisons systematically explores the cultural, legal, political, and religious issues shaping the Muslim prison experience. The authors probe the topic from the perspectives of both prisoners and the criminal justice system. In the process, they illuminate larger issues of race and imprisonment, inmate culture, and rehabilitation. The result is a revealing look at an often sensationalized but understudied population.

Through the centuries, prisons were closed institutions, full of secrets and shrouded in mystery. But modern media culture has opened the gates. Dawn Cecil explores decades of popular culture—from Golden Age Hollywood films to YouTube videos, from newspapers to beer labels, hip-hop music, and children's books—to reveal how prison imagery shapes our understanding of who commits crimes, why, and how the criminal justice system should respond.

The Prison Path: School Practices that Hurt Our Youth takes a unique and unapologetic look into the practices, social norms, construction, and policies within our schools that mirror prisons. From the physical building to the labeling and placement of special education students, schools are reflecting correctional institutions. Beyond the mundane and into the world of social cliques, discipline policies, uniforms, and ethics, this book highlights how similarities between schools and prisons create a hidden and dangerous environment for at-risk students. While many schools and teachers are doing the best they can while facing budget shortfalls, it is the inherent policies, procedures, and normalities that are thought of as being part of the school experience, that may be the most hazardous for at-risk students. Therefore, this book highlights these occurrences and juxtaposes them with similar situations within prisons, providing an eye-opening and daunting look at prisons and schools. This book will cause teachers and those within education to question the practices, policies, and norms that we consider part of the typical school experience. Some additional key features of this book include:Chapter by chapter examination of the similarities in prisons and school Detailed look at the process of special education labeling and its detrimental impact on studentsExamination of the role of social cliques and gangs in institutionsA unique look at the school-to-prison pipeline In-depth questions to ask oneself about to improve schoolsDangers of inviting school resources officers into schools and cutting guidance services Real-life scenarios

At 2.26 million, incarcerated Americans not only outnumber the nation's fourth-largest city, they make up a national constituency bound by a shared condition. Fourth City: Essays from the Prison in America presents more than seventy essays from twenty-seven states, written by incarcerated Americans chronicling their experience inside. In essays as moving as they are eloquent, the authors speak out against a national prison complex that fails so badly at the task of rehabilitation that 60% of the 650,000 Americans released each year return to prison. These essays document the authors'efforts at self-help, the institutional resistance such efforts meet at nearly every turn, and the impact, in money and lives, that this resistance has on the public. Directly confronting the images of prisons and prisoners manufactured by popular media, so-called reality TV, and for-profit local and national news sources, Fourth City recognizes American prisoners as our primary, frontline witnesses to the dysfunction of the largest prison system on earth. Filled with deeply personal stories of coping, survival, resistance, and transformation, Fourth City should be read by every American who believes that law should achieve order in the cause of justice rather than at its cost.

The Struggle Within is an accessible yet wide-ranging historical primer about how mass imprisonment has been a tool of repression deployed against diverse left-wing social movements over the last fifty years. Berger examines some of the most dynamic social movements across half a century: black liberation, Puerto Rican independence, Native American sovereignty, Chicano radicalism, white antiracist and working-class mobilizations, pacifist and antinuclear campaigns, and earth liberation and animal rights. Berger's encyclopedic knowledge of American social movements provides a rich comparative history of numerous social movements that continue to shape contemporary politics. The book also offers a little-heard voice in contemporary critiques of mass incarceration. Rather than seeing the issue of America's prison growth as stemming solely from the war on drugs, Berger locates mass incarceration within a slew of social movements that have provided steep challenges to state power.

For the first time in four decades, prison populations are declining and politicians have reached the consensus that mass imprisonment is no longer sustainable. At this unique moment in the history of corrections, the opportunity has emerged to discuss in meaningful ways how best to shape efforts to control crime and to intervene effectively with offenders. This breakthrough book brings together established correctional scholars to imagine what this prison future might entail. Each scholar uses his or her expertise to craft—in an accessible way for students to read—a blueprint for how to create a new penology along a particular theme. For example, one contributor writes about how to use existing research expertise to create a prison that is therapeutic and another provides insight on how to create a'feminist'prison. In the final chapter the editors pull together the'lessons learned'in a cohesive, comprehensive essay.

This concise and engaging book presents a critical perspective on the correctional system and the process of incarceration in the United States. Fleury-Steiner and Longazel emphasize the magnitude of mass imprisonment in the United States, especially of people of color, not by objective statistics and trends, but by the voices and lived experiences of individuals who live their harsh conditions on a daily basis. This is an ideal book for courses in corrections, social problems, criminology, and prisoner re-entry.

This is that book: The one that is authoritative and readable. The one that covers the subject thoroughly, but is always manageable, navigable, and engaging. It pairs sterling authorship with an accessible style. Like the wind at your back, Richard Tewksbury's Introduction to Corrections motivates you through a wide range of interesting topics without impediment—because clear text needs no box. Accessible and authoritative, Richard Tewksbury's Introduction to Corrections features: A succinct overview of the American correctional system, by a renowned scholar in the field Thorough coverage of course content The structure and operations of correctional systems The history and politics of corrections The goals of corrections in society today A logical organization, from the role of corrections in controlling crime, to an in-depth look at the most troubling issues in corrections today A clean page design Consistently clear and direct narrative style

In The Beautiful Prison incarcerated Americans and prison critics seek to imagine the prison as something better than a machinery of suffering. From personal testimony to theoretical meditation these writers explore and confront the practical and cultural limits the prison places on its transformation into a socially constructive institution. Long-term prisoner Kenneth E. Hartman engages the reader in his struggle to find beauty inside the increasingly bleak and sterile confines of the California Department of Corrections. Chuck Jackson releases his imagination on Houston's notorious Harris County Jail to envision a jailhouse transformed into a university, community, and arts center. Between the grip of the CDC and utopian vision, Leder, Ginsburg, Pinkert, and Brown report on their practical and theoretical work to understand what the prison has been and might be. The Beautiful Prison suggests that any passage from'ugly prisons'into institutions serving the greater good will only be possible when the will and intellectual capital of their inhabitants are met by free-world critics ready to challenge assumptions of the prison acting solely as an apparatus of punishment.

Between 1975 and 2007, the American incarceration rate increased nearly fivefold, a historic increase that puts the United States in a league of its own among advanced economies. We incarcerate more people today than we ever have, and we stand out as the nation that most frequently uses incarceration to punish those who break the law. What factors explain the dramatic rise in incarceration rates in such a short period of time? In Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? Steven Raphael and Michael A. Stoll analyze the shocking expansion of America's prison system and illustrate the pressing need to rethink mass incarceration in this country. Raphael and Stoll carefully evaluate changes in crime patterns, enforcement practices and sentencing laws to reach a sobering conclusion: So many Americans are in prison today because we have chosen, through our public policies, to put them there. They dispel the notion that a rise in crime rates fueled the incarceration surge; in fact, crime rates have steadily declined to all-time lows. There is also little evidence for other factors commonly offered to explain the prison boom, such as the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill since the 1950s, changing demographics, or the crack-cocaine epidemic. By contrast, Raphael and Stoll demonstrate that legislative changes to a relatively small set of sentencing policies explain nearly all prison growth since the 1980s. So-called tough on crime laws, including mandatory minimum penalties and repeat offender statutes, have increased the propensity to punish more offenders with lengthier prison sentences. Raphael and Stoll argue that the high-incarceration regime has inflicted broad social costs, particularly among minority communities, who form a disproportionate share of the incarcerated population. Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? ends with a powerful plea to consider alternative crime control strategies, such as expanded policing, drug court programs, and sentencing law reform, which together can end our addiction to incarceration and still preserve public safety. As states confront the budgetary and social costs of the incarceration boom, Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? provides a revealing and accessible guide to the policies that created the era of mass incarceration and what we can do now to end it.

Despite the dire forecasts of others who had themselves edited books, we proceeded with the project of an edited volume on the American prison, although with more than a little trepidation. We had heard the horror stories of authors turning in their chapters months or years late or never at all, of publishers delaying publication dates, of volumes that read more like patchwork quilts than finely loomed cloth. As if to prove the others wrong, our experience in editing this volume has been mar­ velous, and we think the volume reflects this. Most likely, the success of our experience and of the volume stems from two elements: first, the professionalism and commitment of the authors themselves; and second, the fact that early in the life of this volume, most of the authors convened for a conference to critique and coordinate the chapters. This book brings together an illustrious group of criminologists and correctional scholars who wrote chapters explicitly for this volume. Co­ hesiveness was furthered by the charge we gave to each author to (1) present the major issues, (2) review the empirical research, and (3) dis­ cuss the implications of this work for present and future correctional policy. The goal of this project was to examine the major correctional issues facing prison systems. The chapters scrutinize the issues from the perspective of the system and the individual, from theory to practical and daily management problems, from legal to psychological concerns.

While I was waiting, that advertisement returned to my reflections, and urged its cause imperatively as a command. It was a call, to me, resistless as the voice that awoke the young Israelitish Prophet from his slumbers. In another moment the struggle with my pride was over, and my spirit answered,—I will go, even to lust-besotted Sodom if thou leadest, Light of my path! I seated myself in a street car, went to the prison, applied for the place, and obtained it. Day by day I wrote down what I saw and heard, what I said and did. Why? In obedience to the same Voice that called me to the work. The tale is before you. May it touch the heart of every one who reads the story, and melt it into a compassion which will labor for the redemption of the prisoner; into a pity which will echo around the cry—Open the prison doors, not to let the prisoner go free, but to let in, to him, the light of moral knowledge, and the discipline of Christian charity.

Prison Nation is a distant dispatch from a foreign and forbidden place--the world of America's prisons. Written by prisoners, social critics and luminaries of investigative reporting, Prison Nation testifies to the current state of America's prisoners'living conditions and political concerns. These concerns are not normally the concerns of most Americans, but they should be. From substandard medical care the inadequacy of resources for public defenders to the death penalty, the issues covered in this volume grow more urgent every day. Articles by outstanding writers such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, Noam Chomsky, Mark Dow, Judy Green, Tracy Huling and Christian Parenti chronicle the injustices of prison privatization, class and race in the justice system, our quixotic drug war, the rarely discussed prison AIDS crisis and a judicial system that rewards mostly those with significant resources or the desire to name names. Correctional facilities have become a profitable growth industry, for companies like Wackenhut that run them and companies like Boeing that use cheap prison labor. With fascinating narratives, shocking tales and small stories of hope, Prison Nation paints a picture of a world many Americans know little or nothing about.