Download or read book ADX Florence written by A. B. Alvarez and published by . This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the impenetrable prison known as ADX Florence, Anna Wodehouse's past is coming. The shadow of HALON invades her isolation bringing more danger to her tortured life. In this action-packed thriller Anna discovers that the physical reality of the forces out to kill her are nothing compared to the emotional prison she has built around herself.

Download or read book Hell Is a Very Small Place written by Jean Casella and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An unforgettable look at the peculiar horrors and humiliations involved in solitary confinement” from the prisoners who have survived it (New York Review of Books). On any given day, the United States holds more than eighty-thousand people in solitary confinement, a punishment that—beyond fifteen days—has been denounced as a form of cruel and degrading treatment by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Now, in a book that will add a startling new dimension to the debates around human rights and prison reform, former and current prisoners describe the devastating effects of isolation on their minds and bodies, the solidarity expressed between individuals who live side by side for years without ever meeting one another face to face, the ever-present specters of madness and suicide, and the struggle to maintain hope and humanity. As Chelsea Manning wrote from her own solitary confinement cell, “The personal accounts by prisoners are some of the most disturbing that I have ever read.” These firsthand accounts are supplemented by the writing of noted experts, exploring the psychological, legal, ethical, and political dimensions of solitary confinement. “Do we really think it makes sense to lock so many people alone in tiny cells for twenty-three hours a day, for months, sometimes for years at a time? That is not going to make us safer. That’s not going to make us stronger.” —President Barack Obama “Elegant but harrowing.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A potent cry of anguish from men and women buried way down in the hole.” —Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book Supermax written by Sharon Shalev and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the rise and proliferation of 'Supermaxes', large prisons dedicated to holding prisoners in prolonged and strict solitary confinement, in the United States since the late 1980s. Drawing on unique access to two Supermax prisons and on in-depth interviews with prison officials, prison architects, current and former prisoners, mental health professionals, penal, legal, and human rights experts, it provides a holistic view of the theory, practice and consequences of these prisons. Given the historic uses of solitary confinement, the book also traces continuities and discontinuities in its use on both sides of the Atlantic over the last two centuries. It argues that rather than being an entirely 'new' form of imprisonment, Supermax prisons draw on principles of architecture, surveillance and control which were set out in the early 19th century but which are now enhanced by the most advanced technologies available to current day prison planners and administrators. It asks why a form of confinement which had been discredited in the past is now proposed as the best solution for dealing with 'difficult', 'dangerous' or 'disruptive' prisoners, and assesses the true costs of Supermax confinement.

Download or read book The Hot House written by Pete Earley and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning account of life behind bars at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, where the nation’s hardest criminals do hard time. “A page-turner, as compelling and evocative as the finest novel. The best book on prison I’ve ever read.”—Jonathan Kellerman The most dreaded facility in the prison system because of its fierce population, Leavenworth is governed by ruthless clans competing for dominance. Among the “star” players in these pages: Carl Cletus Bowles, the sexual predator with a talent for murder; Dallas Scott, a gang member who has spent almost thirty of his forty-two years behind bars; indomitable Warden Robert Matthews, who put his shoulder against his prison’s grim reality; Thomas Silverstein, a sociopath confined in “no human contact” status since 1983; “tough cop” guard Eddie Geouge, the only officer in the penitentiary with the authority to sentence an inmate to “the Hole”; and William Post, a bank robber with a criminal record going back to when he was eight years old—and known as the “Catman” for his devoted care of the cats who live inside the prison walls. Pete Earley, celebrated reporter and author of Family of Spies, all but lived for nearly two years inside the primordial world of Leavenworth, where he conducted hundreds of interviews. Out of this unique, extraordinary access comes the riveting story of what life is actually like in the oldest maximum-security prison in the country. Praise for The Hot House “Reporting at its very finest.”—Los Angeles Times “The book is a large act of courage, its subject an important one, and . . . Earley does it justice.”—The Washington Post Book World “[A] riveting, fiercely unsentimental book . . . To [Earley’s] credit, he does not romanticize the keepers or the criminals. His cool and concise prose style serves him well. . . . This is a gutsy book.”—Chicago Tribune “Harrowing . . . an exceptional work of journalism.”—Detroit Free Press “If you’re going to read any book about prison, The Hot House is the one. . . . It is the most realistic, unbuffed account of prison anywhere in print.”—Kansas City Star “A superb piece of reporting.”—Tom Clancy

Download or read book The Globalization of Supermax Prisons written by Jeffrey Ian Ross and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Supermax” prisons, conceived by the United States in the early 1980s, are typically reserved for convicted political criminals such as terrorists and spies and for other inmates who are considered to pose a serious ongoing threat to the wider community, to the security of correctional institutions, or to the safety of other inmates. Prisoners are usually restricted to their cells for up to twenty-three hours a day and typically have minimal contact with other inmates and correctional staff. Not only does the Federal Bureau of Prisons operate one of these facilities, but almost every state has either a supermax wing or stand-alone supermax prison. The Globalization of Supermax Prisons examines why nine advanced industrialized countries have adopted the supermax prototype, paying particular attention to the economic, social, and political processes that have affected each state. Featuring essays that look at the U.S.-run prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanemo, this collection seeks to determine if the American model is the basis for the establishment of these facilities and considers such issues as the support or opposition to the building of a supermax and why opposition efforts failed; the allegation of human rights abuses within these prisons; and the extent to which the decision to build a supermax was influenced by developments in the United States. Additionally, contributors address such domestic matters as the role of crime rates, media sensationalism, and terrorism in each country’s decision to build a supermax prison.

Download or read book American Prisons and Jails 2 volumes written by Vidisha Barua Worley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two-volume encyclopedia provides a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the history and current character of American prisons and jails and their place in the U.S. corrections system. This encyclopedia provides a rigorous and comprehensive summary of correctional systems and practices and their evolution throughout US history. Topics include sentencing norms and contemporary developments; differences between local jails and prisons and regional, state, and federal systems; violent and nonviolent inmate populations; operations of state and federal prisons, including well-known prisons such as ADX-Florence, Alcatrez, Attica, Leavenworth, and San Quentin; privately run, for-profit prisons as well as the companies that run them; inmate culture, including prisoner-generated social hierarchies, prisoner slang, gangs, drug use, and violence; prison trends and statistics, including racial, ethnic, age, gender, and educational breakdowns; the death penalty; and post-incarceration outcomes, including recidivism. The set showcases contributions from some of the leading scholars in the fields of correctional systems and practices and will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in learning more about American prisons, jails, and community corrections.

Download or read book Solitary written by Terry A. Kupers and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “When I testify in court, I am often asked: ‘What is the damage of long-term solitary confinement?’ . . . Many prisoners emerge from prison after years in solitary with very serious psychiatric symptoms even though outwardly they may appear emotionally stable. The damage from isolation is dreadfully real.” —Terry Allen Kupers Imagine spending nearly twenty-four hours a day alone, confined to an eight-by-ten-foot windowless cell. This is the reality of approximately one hundred thousand inmates in solitary confinement in the United States today. Terry Allen Kupers, one of the nation’s foremost experts on the mental health effects of solitary confinement, tells the powerful stories of the inmates he has interviewed while investigating prison conditions during the past forty years. Touring supermax security prisons as a forensic psychiatrist, Kupers has met prisoners who have been viciously beaten or raped, subdued with immobilizing gas, or ignored in the face of urgent medical and psychiatric needs. Kupers criticizes the physical and psychological abuse of prisoners and then offers rehabilitative alternatives to supermax isolation. Solitary is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the true damage that solitary confinement inflicts on individuals living in isolation as well as on our society as a whole.

Download or read book The U S Federal Prison System written by Mary Bosworth and published by SAGE Publications, Incorporated. This book was released on 2002 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the fact that 160,000 people are locked up in the United States federal correctional facilities, practical information about the federal prison system remains difficult to locate. While some information may be found scattered on the Internet, in directions given at court, or through shared personal experience, there is no single source available that is a collection of all available information. The U.S. Federal Prison System is the first comprehensive reference work that includes official prison policies, first-person accounts from prisoners, and information about each federal facility.

Download or read book The Marion Experiment written by Stephen C. Richards and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2015-01-21 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking readers into the darkness of solitary confinement, this searing collection of convict experiences, academic research, and policy recommendations shines a light on the proliferation of supermax (super-maximum-security) prisons and the detrimental effects of long-term high-security confinement on prisoners and their families. Stephen C. Richards, an ex-convict who served time in nine federal prisons before earning his PhD in criminology, argues the supermax prison era began in 1983 at USP Marion in southern Illinois, where the first “control units” were built by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Marion Experiment, written from a convict criminology perspective, offers an introduction to long-term solitary confinement and supermax prisons, followed by a series of first-person accounts by prisoners—some of whom are scholars—previously or currently incarcerated in high-security facilities, including some of the roughest prisons in the western world. Scholars also address the widespread “Marionization” of solitary confinement; its impact on female, adolescent, and mentally ill prisoners and families; and international perspectives on imprisonment. As a bold step toward rethinking supermax prisons, Richards presents the most comprehensive view of the topic to date to raise awareness of the negative aspects of long-term solitary confinement and the need to reevaluate how prisoners are housed and treated.

Download or read book Total Confinement written by Lorna A. Rhodes and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-02-26 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ethnographically rich, thick with gritty details and original insights, Rhodes's revelatory book about US prisons--those who are incarcerated in them and those who run them--should be read by everyone who cares about social justice and the nature of power."—Emily Martin, author of Flexible Bodies "Thank you, Lorna Rhodes, for taking us to where the 'worst of the worst' are kept out of sight and out of mind in the new millennium. This powerful ethnography of the correctional high tech machine reveals how institutional power suffocates individual agency and redefines rationality and insanity. Good, bad and evil fall by the wayside."—Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio "A truly remarkable book. The inside look at supermax confinement alone is worth the price of admission, and the prose sometimes verges on poetry. This is meticulous scholarship."—Hans Toch, author of Living in Prison

Download or read book Prison Life written by Ian O'Donnell and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How prisons around the world shape the social lives of their inhabitants Prison Life offers a fresh appreciation of how people in prison organize their lives, drawing on case studies from Africa, Europe and the US. The book describes how order is maintained, how power is exercised, how days are spent, and how meaning is found in a variety of environments that all have the same function – incarceration – but discharge it very differently. It is based on an unusually diverse range of sources including photographs, drawings, court cases, official reports, memoirs, and site visits. Ian O’Donnell contrasts the soul-destroying isolation of the federal supermax in Florence, Colorado with the crowded conviviality of an Ethiopian prison where men and women cook their own meals, seek opportunities to generate an income, elect a leadership team, and live according to a code of conduct that they devised and enforce. He explores life on wings controlled by the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland’s H Blocks, where men who saw the actions that led to their incarceration as politically-motivated moved as one, in perpetual defiance of the authorities. He shows how prisoners in Texas took to the courts to overthrow a regime that allowed their routine subjugation by violent men known as building tenders, who had been selected by staff to supervise and discipline their peers. In each case study O’Donnell presents the life story of a man who was molded by, and in return molded, the institution that held him. This ensures that his reflections on law and policy as well as on theory and practice never lose sight of the human angle. Imprisonment is about pain after all, and pain is personal.

Download or read book Adx Supermax written by Jack POWERS (03220-028) and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-31 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true story about a former bank robber who escaped from a federal prison and was sent to ADX Supermax in Florence, Colorado. This book is a manifesto on the concept of human beings keeping other human beings in cages, and the effects of that on both society and the individual. The story is composed of a number of events that I experienced directly, and they are one-hundred percent true. The structure of my composition is intentional, and it is intended to convey my actual state of mind at the time of the events depicted. There are several passages where I refer to myself in the third person. This was both how I felt about myself at times, and it was necessary while writing and re-writing in order to keep going. There are also vignettes that involve some of my more pronounced memories during childhood. These helped me make it through my ordeal at the supermax. The process of writing is a lot like the process of personal growth and development. I began this work with an idea, sketched out the general framework and then began to put the meat on the bones. Of course, I had to go over the whole thing time and time again in order to get it the way I wanted it to be. The act of writing has been my main therapy for many years now. I may or may not be a good writer (that is for you to decide), but I love to write. A lot of what you are about to read was first written with the stub of a pencil on lined, prison-supplied paper. There is a lot of written content that has been lost to transfers, shakedowns, and broken sprinklers. It does not bother me because it was always the process itself that was most important to me. There are more stories within the story that could have been told. However, I decided to keep it as short and to-the-point as is possible in order to sharpen the points I want to make. Perhaps I will revisit the rest of the story at another time. For now, it is more than sufficient for the purposes it is intended to fulfill. I am confident that the reader will find this work to be educational, practical, and useful particularly for those who are interested in criminal justice system reform. My main point is that there are better ways to achieve the goals of law and order in our society. Thought I do carry a certain hurt in my heart, I am not bitter or vindictive or unfair.

Download or read book Supermax written by Sharon Shalev and published by Willan. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the rise and proliferation of 'Supermaxes', large prisons dedicated to holding prisoners in prolonged and strict solitary confinement, in the United States since the late 1980s. Drawing on unique access to two Supermax prisons and on in-depth interviews with prison officials, prison architects, current and former prisoners, mental health professionals, penal, legal, and human rights experts, it provides a holistic view of the theory, practice and consequences of these prisons. Given the historic uses of solitary confinement, the book also traces continuities and discontinuities in its use on both sides of the Atlantic over the last two centuries. It argues that rather than being an entirely 'new' form of imprisonment, Supermax prisons draw on principles of architecture, surveillance and control which were set out in the early 19th century but which are now enhanced by the most advanced technologies available to current day prison planners and administrators. It asks why a form of confinement which had been discredited in the past is now proposed as the best solution for dealing with 'difficult', 'dangerous' or 'disruptive' prisoners, and assesses the true costs of Supermax confinement.

Download or read book Maximum Insecurity written by William Wright and published by . This book was released on 2014-08-27 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After three decades as a successful ear surgeon, William Wright, MD is bored beyond belief. He dabbles with retirement, but finds idleness infuriating. He has to do something. Then he sees an ad for a doctor's position from the Colorado Department of Corrections at a supermax prison. Now that, he thinks, would be different. His wife has some thoughts on the matter too. She thinks her husband just lost his mind and is on a collision course with a prison shiv. After his first day on the job, he wonders if she wasn't onto something. His first patient is an arrogant, callous youth convicted of five cold-blooded murders. Dr. Wright has to steel himself not to bolt. Nothing prepares a doctor for life at the Colorado State Penitentiary. He quickly discovers treating maximum security convicts is like treating recalcitrant murderous four-year-olds. Always willing to threaten their doctors with bodily harm, they are more interested in scamming drugs than treatment. Told with self-depreciating humor and scathing wit, Maximum Insecurity describes Dr. Wright's adventures practicing medicine in a supermax correctional facility without, he's glad to say, getting killed even once.

Download or read book Solitary Confinement written by Lisa Guenther and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prolonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons—even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today’s supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners’ sense of identity and their ability to understand the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years. Drawing on the testimony of prisoners and the work of philosophers and social activists from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis, the author defines solitary confinement as a kind of social death. It argues that isolation exposes the relational structure of being by showing what happens when that structure is abused—when prisoners are deprived of the concrete relations with others on which our existence as sense-making creatures depends. Solitary confinement is beyond a form of racial or political violence; it is an assault on being. A searing and unforgettable indictment, Solitary Confinement reveals what the devastation wrought by the torture of solitary confinement tells us about what it means to be human—and why humanity is so often destroyed when we separate prisoners from all other people.

Download or read book The Man Who Mailed Himself Out of Jail written by Byron Christopher and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-20 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A one-time murderer and many-time thief, Richard Lee McNair is the only person ever to break out jail, state penitentiary and federal penitentiary. Three escapes. McNair, a former US Air Force Sergeant, was 47 when he shipped himself out a Louisiana prison on the 5th of April, 2006. His escape came to within a whisker of failing when he was confronted on railroad tracks by a policeman, an event recorded by the officer's dashcam. The encounter became a famous crime video clip on YouTube. Month after month, McNair was featured on America's Most Wanted and led newspaper and television newscasts in the United States and Canada.Through more than 350 letters and 3,500 hand-written pages from his solitary-confinement cell at the 'Supermax' in Colorado, Richard McNair provides the never-before-known details on how he pulled off his three escapes, his encounters with police, and what can be best described as a semi-paranoid life on the lam.His Houdini-like escape in 2006 was the first from a federal prison in 13 years, and there hasn't been one since.Is Richard Lee McNair the world's greatest escape artist? The reader can decide.

Download or read book From Slave Ship to Supermax written by Patrick Elliot Alexander and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: antipanoptic expressivity and the new neo-slave novel -- Talking in George Jackson's shadow: neoslavery, police intimidation, and imprisoned intellectualism in Baldwin's If Beale Street could talk -- Middle passage reinstated: whispers from the women's prison in Morrison's Beloved -- "Didn't I say this was worse than prison?": the slave ship-Supermax relation in Johnson's Middle passage -- "Tell them I'm a man": slavery's vestiges and imprisoned radical intellectualism in Gaines's A lesson before dying -- Epilogue: the prison classroom and the neo-abolitionist novel