BOOKS

This reader introduces the student to prison management. Particular interest is given the increased role of profit in the application of punishment. Profit and prison privatization are viewed within their larger context. As such, public and private prison operations are compared. Part of this comparison takes place through situating each sector upon an ideological continuum. This placement helps indicate the direction being taken by the contemporary prison. It further reveals that tomorrow's prisons may be less driven by traditional objectives and more driven by the notions of profit and efficiency.

Angela Davis swings a wrecking ball into America's penal institutions. argues for the abolition of the prison system as the dominant way of responding to America’s social ills. "In thinking about the possible obsolescence of the prison," Davis writes, "we should ask how it is that so many people could end up in prison without major debates regarding the efficacy of incarceration." This thoroughly researched book should point the way to further thought, debate, and understanding. (Davis, Seven Stories Press, 2003.)

The former long-time warden at the prison, Bruton tells numerous stories and chilling and gruesome anecdotes about the convicts, attempts to understand the criminal mind, and explains both how the prison was designed and the cutting-edge philosophy behind its operation.

Bloodsworth is the true story of unsurpassed courage and character, of relentless struggle, of abiding hope, and of a modern-day miracle. Charged in 1984 with the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl, Kirk Bloodsworth was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in Maryland's gas chamber. From the beginning, he proclaimed his innocence, but when he was granted a new trial because his prosecutors had improperly withheld evidence, the second trial also resulted in conviction. Bloodsworth did not give up. He wrote hundreds of letters from prison. He read everything he could find in the prison library about murder investigations. In The Blooding by Joseph Wambaugh, he found what he needed to save himself -- an account of the new DNA "fingerprinting" used to solve a case in England. Then he found a lawyer willing to fight for the innovative testing. After nine years in one of the harshest prisons in America, Kirk Bloodsworth was vindicated by DNA evidence. He was pardoned by the governor of Maryland and has gone on to become a tireless spokesman for criminal justice reform.

Twenty percent of women entering New York prisons have AIDS or are HIV positive. This book tells their story, and the story of the ACE, a peer counseling and educational program. While some of the information about AIDS may be outdated in light of current research, the story of these women remains vitally important. (Whoopi Goldberg and ACE, Overlook Press, 1998.)

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Daniel Burton-Rose, Daniel Pens, and Paul Wright have collected reports from America's prisons, many of which ran in Prison Legal News. The writing describes medical care, racism, overcrowding and examines everything from private prisons to the effect of television on prison life. It teaches "the lesson that prisoners must be allowed to speak and write if society is to understand the realities of incarceration. " (Parenti, Common Courage Press, 1998.)

Herald Press, 1990.

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FROM OUR EDITORS Wally Lamb's novels She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True were both Oprah's Book Club selections and No. 1 New York Times bestsellers. On the surface, Couldn't Keep It to Myself is far different than these works of fiction. In this heart-wrenching collection, Lamb introduces and presents 11 female writers who happen to be convicted felons. Their pieces, as potent as their personalities, would be less accessible without Lamb's modest and disarming preludes. "Prison," he writes, "is not a place where trust is given easily." Obviously, he earned that trust, and we now share its fruits.

FROM THE PUBLISHER "For the past several years, Lamb has taught writing to a group of women prisoners at York Correctional Institution. At first mistrustful of Lamb, one another, and the writing process, over time these students let down their guard, picked up their pens, and discovered their voices. In this unforgettable collection, the women of York describe in their own words how they were imprisoned by abuse, rejection, and their own self-destructive impulses long before they entered the criminal justice system. Yet these are stories of hope, humor, and triumph in the face of despair. Having used writing as a tool to unlock their creativity and begin the process of healing, these amazing writers have left victimhood behind." In his introduction, Lamb describes the journey of expression and self-awareness the women took through their writings and shares how they challenged him as a teacher and as a fellow author.

Currie spends half of his book detailing the myths and misconceptions of criminal justice policy and the other half on concrete solutions. A deep knowledge of the social impact and the use of social action to remedy the question of crime, especially in the inner cities, is a cornerstone of Currie's analysis. Metropolitan Books, 1998.

This memoir reveals the personal and political transformation of a young African-American boy growing up in the urban poverty of Baltimore. Having been incarcerated since the age of 16, N'Zinga provides first-hand knowledge of racial politics and every-day life inside prison. N'Zinga takes us on his journey from a rebellious youth lashing out at a hurtful world to a political activist and writer.

On the last night of Judith Tannenbaum's poetry writing class at San Quentin, one of her students gave her an assignment. Elmo challenged, "Write about these past four years from your point of view; tell your story; let us know what you learned." The response is this book. Hettie Jones, a writer, prison poetry teacher, and chairman of the PEN Prison Writing Program, describes the book as "open-hearted and even-handed because Tannenbaum looks at the world she entered as openly and widely as possible. She has important stories to tell about prison, about art, about what it is to be human, and about trying to live in the world with both loving-kindness and honest attention."

This anthology of material by winners of PEN America's annual prison writing contests provides a polyphonic chorus of rejoinder to our policies of maximum incarceration. The collection's prose is honed and direct, with many contributors striking a hypnotic balance between the urgency inherent in writing as survival and the punishingly absurd nature of their circumstances: though their literary imaginations range widely, bodily, they're going no place. Most at issue is the individual reader's openness toward otherwise shunned figures. Several pieces are from longtime death-row inmates, presenting lucid, provocative narratives that don't excuse their youthful brutality. A thick sheaf of entries represents the hapless POWs of the Drug War (often disadvantaged women), serving long sentences for semantic and violence-free crimes. The distribution of fiction, poetry, and essays into 11 topical sections (e.g. Players, Games) allows a textured diversity of excellent pieces.

Over Two Million People are incarcerated in America's prisons and jails, eight times as many since 1975. The U.S. now locks up a higher percentage of its population than any other country in the world. At current incarceration rates, almost one in three black males born in the U.S. today will spend some time in prison. Mandatory minimum sentencing, parole agencies intent on sending people back to prison, three-strike laws, for-profit prisons, and other changes in the legal system have contributed to this spectacular rise in the nation's prison population. A rise that seems to have no end in sight.

Soering does not argue that prisons should not exist or dispute that there are people who need to be locked away. His book is not an indictment of the legal system that lands many people in prison. Instead, An Expensive Way to Make Bad People Worse offers a mainly monetary analysis of why it is absurd fiscal policy to lock people up so often and for so long.

It should be no surprise that the criminal justice system treats female offenders differently than males, nor that the nature of crimes committed by women differs drastically from those of men. However, very little has been studied about these differences, and even less has been done to address them. Chesney-Lind is one of the foremost scholars on female criminality, and her work sets out to explain the rising number of women being incarcerated. She explores the cultural expectations that make the public uncomfortable with female aggression and the idea of women as criminals. This book opens a vital discussion and shatters the silence on the issue of female prisoners.

While on death row at San Quentin, Jarvis Masters converts to Buddhism. This collection of vignettes does not show the transformation, but rather how Masters applies the principles of this religion to prison and his changing attitude toward the nature of life in general. The story doesn't have a narrative arc, but the effect of the tales, both from San Quentin and his childhood, accumulate—the abuse and terror, the courts appointing him to foster care, then juvenile detention centers, then prison, then death row for a crime committed in the penitentiary. For many of the other prisoners, their abusive childhoods and their lives in prison are never really reconciled. Masters never has much of a chance in life, yet he isn't bitter. He seems to have a remarkably gentle nature. "Twenty years ago, I was a ward of the state, and they told me they wanted to protect me. And now I was in the same kind of room, with dim buzzing lights, and they were figuring out how to try me and maybe kill me."

The annual rodeo at Angola State Prison has the feel of a Roman gladiatorial event. It is not sport, but rather a spectacle of convicts engaged in dangerous events, such as convict poker, where they all sit around a table absolutely still, while a bull rages around them. The last one to move wins. The God of the title, however, is not a participant but the warden, who has absolute control over the prison and is most likely profiting from their labor. His paternalistic philosophy towards the prisoners is that each man should try to become the best person he can, even if he's serving life in prison. The book shows how the inmates struggle with the transgressions that got them there—many are horrendously violent acts—and grasp for the different forms of redemption available to them within the prison. The book begins and ends with the rodeo, but the event never really serves as a metaphor for the power, the politics, and the history of Angola. The event doesn't even seem exploitative by the end of the story. You realize that the convicts are risking themselves, not to ask forgiveness, but rather because this is their one chance to appear in public and to show that they are fully human.

"In September 1996, fifty-three-year-old heroin addict Billy Ochoa was sentenced to 326 years in prison. His crime: committing $2,100 worth of welfare fraud. Ochoa was sent to New Folsom supermax prison, joining thousands of other men who will spend the rest of their lives in California's teeming correctional facilities as a result of that state's tough Three Strikes law. His incarceration will cost over $20,000 a year until he dies." Hard Time Blues weaves together the story of the growth of the American prison system over the past quarter century primarily through the story of Ochoa, a career criminal who grew up in the barrios of post-World War II L.A. Ochoa, who had a long history of nonviolent crimes committed to fund his drug habit, and cycled in and out of prison since the late 1960s, is a perfect example of how perennial misfits, rather than blood-soaked violent criminals, make up the majority of America's prisoners. This is also the story of the burgeoning careers of politicians such as former California governor Pete Wilson, who rose to power on the "crime issue." Wilson, whose grandfather was a cop murdered by drug-runners in early twentieth-century Chicago, scored a stunning come-from-behind reelection victory in 1994. In so doing, he came to epitomize the 1990s tough-on-crime p

olitician.

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Hurricane recounts the harrowing, inspiring odyssey of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a black boxer wrongly convicted of three murders, from fierce despair to freedom and enlightenment.. "On June 17, 1966, two black men strode into the Lafayette Grill, a white redoubt in racially mixed Paterson, New Jersey, and shot three people to death. Rubin Carter and his young acquaintance John Artis were not those men, but they were convicted of the murders in a highly publicized and racially charged trial.. "Over the next decade, Carter amassed convincing evidence of his innocence and the vocal support of numerous celebrities (Bob Dylan's song "Hurricane" was but one example). He was freed pending a new trial, only to lose his appeal - to the astonishment of many - and land back in prison. He avoided almost all human contact, until he received a letter from Lesra Martin, a teenager raised in a Brooklyn ghetto.. "Against his bitter instincts, Carter agreed to meet with Martin, thus taking the first step on a long, tortuous path back into the world. Martin introduced Carter to an enigmatic group of Canadians, including a strong-willed woman with whom he later began an intense unlikely romance. In the process, the Canadians helped wage an international battle to free him.

Jennifer Wynn explores the world inside the jail,an institution with its own power plant, schools, hospital, and tailor. She takes a measured approach to the challenges confronted by both inmates and correctional workers and provides moving stories of those that she meets. (Wynn, Griffin, 2002.)

(Bedau, Radelet, and Putnam, Northeastern University Press, 1992,)

Invisible Punishment is the first comprehensive examination of the hidden ramifications of conviction for inmates, ex-felons, their families and the communities they come from. Here, leading scholars and advocates -- including Jeremy Travis, Beth Richie, Bruce Western, Todd Clear, Paul Farmer, and Judith Greene -- bring to light a host of little-known "invisible punishments," from disenfranchisement and ineligibility for welfare benefits, public housing and employment opportunities, to price gouging by phone companies with prison contracts, gender imbalance in the inner-city neighborhoods from which prisoners are disproportionately drawn, and a generation of children with incarcerated parents. Together, the contributors to this book define the boundaries of a whole new field of inquiry in criminal justice.

(Costanzo, St. Martins Press, 1997.)

Last Man Standing is a chronicle of the twenty-seven-year struggle to break a conspiratorial abuse of power and free one of America's most famous political prisoners." "In 1968, twenty-year-old Elmer Gerard "Geronimo" Pratt returned from Vietnam with a chest full of medals and a Purple Heart into the most heated racial climate in American history. Taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, Pratt enrolled at UCLA, where the Black Panther Party was busy recruiting. Propelled by a diverse group of African Americans, the Panther agenda was a volatile mix of black rage, black pride, altruism, idealism, and violence. Under the charismatic leadership of Eldridge Cleaver, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and Bunchy Carter, Pratt rose to the rank of Deputy Minister of Defense and became leader of the Los Angeles Chapter. The Panthers did not go unnoticed by J. Edgar Hoover. In the era of enemies' lists, his FBI drew up its own list of Panthers to be "neutralized" and began a systematic counterintelligence program to undermine black solidarity. Geronimo Pratt headed Hoover's list. When an FBI informer within the Panther party agreed to testify that Pratt murdered a young woman at a Santa Monica tennis court, his days as a free citizen came to an end.

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The book tells the story of Elaine Bartlett, who spent sixteen years in prison for a single sale of cocaine -- a consequence of New York State's controversial Rockefeller drug laws. It opens on the morning Elaine is set free from the women's prison in Bedford Hills, New York, after winning clemency from the governor. At age forty-two, having spent most of her adult life behind bars, she has no money, no job, and no real home. What she does have is a large and troubled family, including four children, who live in a decrepit housing project on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. "I left one prison to come home to another," Elaine says. In the months following her release, she strives to adjust to "life on the outside": conforming to parole's rules, hunting for a job and a new apartment, and reclaiming her role as head of the household, all while campaigning for the repeal of the merciless sentencing laws that led to her long prison term.

(Abu-Jamal, Avon Books, 1996.)

A true story of Mary (Lee) Dortch who has been in prison for thirty years. She knew she was "different" early on; here she tells of her relationships and about how being æmasculineÆ affected her life both in and out of prison. FROM THE CRITICS Publishers Weekly This ``autobiography'' of lesbian prisoner Mary ``Lee'' Dortch (written in her voice but by her lover) touches all the bases in the tragically familiar story of a life of neglect and rejection leading to violence and mental illness. While the material facts presented are shocking, the reasoning behind their presentation leaves much to be desired. The only reason given for Dortch's first crime, holding an entire family hostage with a revolver, is that she wanted the attention of a woman with whom she was infatuated. Her tendency toward self-mutilation, though detailed in laundry-list fashion, is not explained with any more depth. Much is made of Dortch's masculine appearance and stubbly beard--she once shot and killed a man who came on to her in a gay bar, not realizing she was female until he rubbed her crotch. One of the more poignant moments occurs when she is released on parole after 23 years and amazed by touch-tone telephones, liters of soda and grocery-store price scanners. Unfortunately, her method of dealing with this newness is to grab a woman passerby and hold a knife to her throat; the only explanation given for this behavior is a desire to return to prison.

This research study by O'Brien (social work, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago) is based on interviews with 18 women formerly incarcerated for transgressions involving substance abuse or property. She shows how their prison and parole experiences affected their reentry into the "free world" as they sought to establish homes, experience healthy relationships with family and others, and live productive lives. The author found that each woman's degree of stability was strongly related to the availability and quality of education, counseling, and vocational training during her confinement as well as the nature of supervision and assistance from parole officers and others following their release. Among other topics, she ties together a review of related literature, a description of her research strategy, and a serious questioning of the value to society (as well as to the individual) of the current "get tough" incarceration solution to nonviolent "criminal" activity of both sexes.

The New Press, 1999

Published in 1766, this book takes the ideas of the Enlightenment and applies them to criminal justice. Believing man to be rational and acting of free will, Beccaria states that people make calculated decisions about what behavior they will engage in. They weigh the costs and benefits of an action and decide accordingly. Therefore criminals have calculated that the benefit of the criminal act outweighs the costs. To deter them, punishment must then outweigh the particular crime. Offering a rather mathematical approach, Beccaria posits a rational approach to crime and punishment. A punishment need only cost just a bit more than the benefit would be worth and be proportionate to the harm done by the criminal act. This is considered the beginning of criminological theory and is referred to as the classical school of criminology.

Westview Press, 1999.

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Prison Conversations is a window into contemporary American prison life. Through a series of oral history style interviews, nine prisoners incarcerated at the Washington State Reformatory talk about the path that brought them to prison, their life behind bars, and their hopes and intentions for a future life on the outside. The book also provides an account of the author's experiences as a volunteer in the prison, how he came to know these prisoners, how certain friendships with them developed. In effect the reader is invited along on the author's journey into what was for him--and presumably will be for most readers--an unfamiliar and emotionally powerful world. SYNOPSIS Gabriel interviewed nine prisoners at the Washington State Reformatory over three years and here reports those conversations with little substantive editing. The prisoners frankly discuss their crimes, prison life, and their feelings about their victims and about re-entering society. The extensive interviews allow each prisoner a voice unrestricted by stereotypes and give readers a glimpse into the prisoners' world.

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For most Christians, prison culture is like visiting a foreign land; and the thought of ministering in prisons to those incarcerated is an intimidating prospect. Prison Ministry will offer you the empowerment you need as a pastor, an educator, or a lay leader in doing effective prison ministry. Providing a thorough "inside-out" view of prison life, Lennie Spitale offers a unique and qualifying vantage for writing about prison culture and prison ministry. As a young man, Spitale served a prison sentence. Two years after his conversion to Christianity, he began conducting a weekly Bible study in a local jail. This led to full time ministry. Prison Ministry covers areas such as the emotional challenges of prisoners and those who minister to them, the environment of fear, the culture of deprivation, friendships between prisoners, guidelines and principles, dos and don'ts, and many other relevant and essential topics for equipping any individual or church for effective prison ministry.

This book works well for activists, researchers, writers, corrections

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In her memoir, The Prisoner's Wife, asha bandele meets, falls in love with, and marries Rashid, a convicted killer serving 20 years with life on the back for murder. Throughout the memoir, she experiences the humiliation, false hopes, and depravity of prison with him. bandele even emotionally goes through the guilt for the murder with him. While reading it, you can't help but question her choice of beaux. bandele's book sets out to explain that. Her honesty with these struggles make this a remarkable process to watch, as the limitations and stasis of the prison break them both down until they face the most vital, raw, painful parts of themselves.

The New Press. 1999

In 1994 the National Criminal Justice Commission was formed. Made up of a cross-section of criminal justice experts, community leaders, scholars, and concerned citizens, the commission set out to assess the current state of the criminal justice system in America. The result is this report, which systematically analyzes all of the current policies and debunks the myths and misconceptions around crime and punishment. It also provides some insightful recommendations on how to improve our criminal justice system. Harper Perennial, 1996.

In this text, the author argues that actions of well-off people, such as the refusal to make workplaces safer, refusal to curtail deadly pollution, promotion of unnecessary surgery, and prescriptions for unnecessary drugs, cause occupational and environmental hazards to innocent members of the public and produce as much death, destruction, and financial loss as so-called crimes of the poor. However, these crimes of the well-off are rarely treated as severely as those of the poor. Reiman documents the extent of anti-poor bias in arrest, conviction, and sentencing practices and shows that the bias is conjoined with a general refusal to remedy the causes of crime - poverty, lack of education, and discrimination. As a result, the criminal justice system fails to reduce crime. The author uses numerous studies and examples to illustrate his points, and difficult concepts are explained in a non-technical manner. The book provokes thought and discussion, even among people who disagree with its content. SYNOPSIS A textbook for a course in criminal justice, updated often since 1979 to incorporate the ever burgeoning examples of legal injustice in the US.

Since the U.S. just elected (sort of) a president who is chest-thumping proud of the record number of people being put to death on Texas's death row, this book is particularly relevant. It gives faces and stories to the growing number of men awaiting execution in Texas prisons. The viewer experiences the hope, the diversions, the nightmarish absurdity of this city of the damned within the strongest gates and thickest chains in our society. The viewer is with the prisoners—their last statements, their apologies, sweating brows, and terrified eyes—all the way up to the final moments.

Photographs have impacted laws and legislation before, and this book has the power to do just that. Battered Woman's Syndrome has not been effective as a defense, but the ideas behind it could be incorporated into legislation and sentencing. Atwood spent 11 years visiting women in prisons around world. Cross-culturally their stories are similar—most women in prison for a violent crime are there for killing their abusers. Their crimes are acts of desperate powerlessness. These women have been controlled, beaten, raped, and repeatedly threatened by husbands, lovers, and stepfathers. While the stories are infuriating, the photographs are amazing; looking at these images is like experiencing an elegiac nightmare. A 14-month-old toddler who has spent his life in prison with his mother walks down a cavernous, empty corridor of a prison. There's a woman being stripped naked and tied down spread-eagle for trying to commit suicide by swallowing her clothes. A shackled and chained woman is giving birth.

Rhodes tackles difficult questions about the extreme conditions of confinement, the treatment of the mentally ill in prisons, and an ever-advancing technology of isolation and surveillance. Using her superb interview skills and powers of observation, she documents how prisoners, workers, and administrators all struggle to retain dignity and a sense of self within maximum security institutions. In settings that place in question the very humanity of those who live and work in them, Rhodes discovers complex interactions—from the violent to the tender—among prisoners and staff. Total Confinement offers an indispensable close-up of the implications of our dependence on prisons to solve long-standing problems of crime and injustice in the United States.

Speaking from settings as diverse as a Roman prison cell in 203 A.D., a Siberian labor camp in the 1930s, and a present-day U.S. state penitentiary, these thirty-seven writers describe prison life and affirm the power of expression in memoirs, diaries, letters, essays, fiction, and poetry. Some write to vindicate themselves, some to strengthen their beliefs, and some to express solidarity with other women. Many write to survive, and to comfort themselves or their children. All of them, as editor Judith Scheffler notes, unite "in condemning an institution that labels them worthless and attempts to destroy their humanity in the name of justice." In this riveting collection, now back in print in an updated and expanded edition, women prisoners break through the walls of silence that have long surrounded their experience. Winner of the Susan Koppelman Award for Outstanding Anthology

After two intense court battles with prison officials, Rathbone gained unprecedented access to the otherwise invisible women of the oldest operating women's prison in America. The picture that emerges is both astounding and enraging. Women reveal the agonies of separation from family, and the prevalence of depression, sexual predation, and institutional malaise behind bars. But they also share their more personal hopes and concerns. There is horror in parison for sure, but Rathbone insists there is also humor and romance and downright bloody-mindedness. Getting beyond the political to the personal, A World Apart is both a triumph of empathy and a searing indictment of a system that has overlooked the plight of women in prison for far too long

Websites of Programs that bring books to Prisoners

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