Download or read book American Prison written by Shane Bauer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org New 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.
Download or read book Inside Private Prisons written by Lauren-Brooke Eisen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Voices from American Prisons written by Kaia Stern and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-20 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voices From American Prisons: Faith, Education and Healing is a comprehensive and unique contribution to understanding the dynamics and nature of penal confinement. In this book, author Kaia Stern describes the history of punishment and prison education in the United States and proposes that specific religious and racial ideologies - notions of sin, evil and otherness - continue to shape our relationship to crime and punishment through contemporary penal policy. Inspired by people who have lived, worked, and studied in U.S. prisons, Stern invites us to rethink the current ‘punishment crisis’ in the United States. Based on in-depth interviews with people who were incarcerated, as well as extensive conversations with students, teachers, corrections staff, and prison administrators, the book introduces the voices of those who have participated in the few remaining post-secondary education programs that exist behind bars. Drawing on individual narrative and various modern day case examples, Stern focuses on dehumanization, resistance, and community transformation. She demonstrates how prison education is essential, can provide healing, and yet is still not enough to interrupt mass incarceration. In short, this book explores the possibility of transformation from a retributive punishment system to a system of justice. The book’s engaging, human accounts and multidisciplinary perspective will appeal to criminologists, sociologists, historians, theologians and scholars of education alike. Voices from American Prisons will also capture general readers who are interested in learning about a timely and often silenced reality of contemporary modern society.
Download or read book Prisons and Punishment in America written by Michael O'Hear and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-09-14 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Synthesizing the latest 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. It examines 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, it considers prospects for reducing current incarceration levels, the availability and effectiveness of alternatives to incarceration, and the future of capital punishment.
Download or read book Locked Up written by Laura Bufano Edge and published by Twenty-First Century Books. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the United States prison system and its many changes over the years.
Download or read book Health and Incarceration written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-08-08 with total page 67 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past four decades, the rate of incarceration in the United States has skyrocketed to unprecedented heights, both historically and in comparison to that of other developed nations. At far higher rates than the general population, those in or entering U.S. jails and prisons are prone to many health problems. This is a problem not just for them, but also for the communities from which they come and to which, in nearly all cases, they will return. Health and Incarceration is the summary of a workshop jointly sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences(NAS) Committee on Law and Justice and the Institute of Medicine(IOM) Board on Health and Select Populations in December 2012. Academics, practitioners, state officials, and nongovernmental organization representatives from the fields of healthcare, prisoner advocacy, and corrections reviewed what is known about these health issues and what appear to be the best opportunities to improve healthcare for those who are now or will be incarcerated. The workshop was designed as a roundtable with brief presentations from 16 experts and time for group discussion. Health and Incarceration reviews what is known about the health of incarcerated individuals, the healthcare they receive, and effects of incarceration on public health. This report identifies opportunities to improve healthcare for these populations and provides a platform for visions of how the world of incarceration health can be a better place.
Download or read book Do Prisons Make Us Safer written by Steven Raphael and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2009-01-22 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The number of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails more than quadrupled between 1975 and 2005, reaching the unprecedented level of over two million inmates today. Annual corrections spending now exceeds 64 billion dollars, and many of the social and economic burdens resulting from mass incarceration fall disproportionately on minority communities. Yet crime rates across the country have also dropped considerably during this time period. In Do Prisons Make Us Safer? leading experts systematically examine the complex repercussions of the massive surge in our nation's prison system. Do Prisons Make Us Safer? asks whether it makes sense to maintain such a large and costly prison system. The contributors expand the scope of previous analyses to include a number of underexplored dimensions, such as the fiscal impact on states, effects on children, and employment prospects for former inmates. Steven Raphael and Michael Stoll assess the reasons behind the explosion in incarceration rates and find that criminal behavior itself accounts for only a small fraction of the prison boom. Eighty-five percent of the trend can be attributed to "get tough on crime" policies that have increased both the likelihood of a prison sentence and the length of time served. Shawn Bushway shows that while prison time effectively deters and incapacitates criminals in the short term, long-term benefits such as overall crime reduction or individual rehabilitation are less clear cut. Amy Lerman conducts a novel investigation into the effects of imprisonment on criminal psychology and uncovers striking evidence that placement in a high security penitentiary leads to increased rates of violence and anger—particularly in the case of first time or minor offenders. Rucker Johnson documents the spill-over effects of parental incarceration—children who have had a parent serve prison time exhibit more behavioral problems than their peers. Policies to enhance the well-being of these children are essential to breaking a devastating cycle of poverty, unemployment, and crime. John Donohue's economic calculations suggest that alternative social welfare policies such as education and employment programs for at-risk youth may lower crime just as effectively as prisons, but at a much lower human cost. The cost of hiring a new teacher is roughly equal to the cost of incarcerating an additional inmate. The United States currently imprisons a greater proportion of its citizens than any other nation in the world. Until now, however, we've lacked systematic and comprehensive data on how this prison boom has affected families, communities, and our nation as a whole. Do Prisons Make Us Safer? provides a highly nuanced and deeply engaging account of one of the most dramatic policy developments in recent U.S. history.
Download or read book The American Prison written by Francis T. Cullen and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2013-04-11 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
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 American Gulag written by Mark Dow and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The freelance writer and poet takes an unprecedented look inside the secret and repressive world of U.S. immigration prisons.
Download or read book Mass Incarceration on Trial written by Jonathan Simon and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mass Incarceration on Trial examines a series of landmark decisions about prison conditions-culminating in Brown v. Plata, decided in May 2011 by the U.S. Supreme Court-that has opened an unexpected escape route from this trap of "tough on crime" politics. This set of rulings points toward values that could restore legitimate order to American prisons and, ultimately, lead to the demise of mass incarceration. This book offers a provocative and brilliant reading to the end of mass incarceration.
Download or read book America Is the Prison written by Lee Bernstein and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1970s, while politicians and activists outside prisons debated the proper response to crime, incarcerated people helped shape those debates though a broad range of remarkable political and literary writings. Lee Bernstein explores the forces that sparked a dramatic "prison art renaissance," shedding light on how incarcerated people produced powerful works of writing, performance, and visual art. These included everything from George Jackson's revolutionary Soledad Brother to Miguel Pinero's acclaimed off-Broadway play and Hollywood film Short Eyes. An extraordinary range of prison programs--fine arts, theater, secondary education, and prisoner-run programs--allowed the voices of prisoners to influence the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican writers, "New Journalism," and political theater, among the most important aesthetic contributions of the decade. By the 1980s and '90s, prisoners' educational and artistic programs were scaled back or eliminated as the "war on crime" escalated. But by then these prisoners' words had crossed over the wall, helping many Americans to rethink the meaning of the walls themselves and, ultimately, the meaning of the society that produced them.
Download or read book The Development of American Prisons and Prison Customs 1776 1845 written by Orlando Faulkland Lewis and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the attempt to decipher a number of strange events after he moves into an old cottage, a boy discovers a group of English folk engaged in Devil worship.
Download or read book College for Convicts written by Christopher Zoukis and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States accounts for 5 percent of the world's population, yet incarcerates about 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Examining a wealth of studies by researchers and correctional professionals, and the experience of educators, this book shows recidivism rates drop in direct correlation with the amount of education prisoners receive, and the rate drops dramatically with each additional level of education attained. Presenting a workable solution to America's mass incarceration and recidivism problems, this book demonstrates that great fiscal benefits arise when modest sums are spent educating prisoners. Educating prisoners brings a reduction in crime and social disruption, reduced domestic spending and a rise in quality of life. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Download or read book Prison Nation written by Paul Wright and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Prisons and the American Conscience written by Paul W. Keve and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In tracing the evolution of federal imprisonment, Paul W. Keve emphasizes the ways in which corrections history has been affected by and is reflective of other trends in the political and cultural life of the United States. The federal penal system has undergone substantial evolution over two hundred years. Keve divides this evolutionary process into three phases. During the first phase, from 1776 through the end of the nineteenth century, no federal prisons existed in the United States. Federal prisoners were simply boarded in state or local facilities. It was in the second phase, starting with the passage of the Three Prison Act by Congress in 1891, that federal facilities were constructed at Leavenworth and Atlanta, while the old territorial prison at McNeil Island in Washington eventually became, in effect, the third prison. In this second phase, the federal government began the enormous task of providing its own prison cells. Still, there was no effective supervisory force to make a prison system. In 1930, the Federal Bureau of Prisons was created, marking the third phase of the prison system’s evolution. The Bureau, in its first sixty years of existence, introduced numerous correctional innovations, thereby building an effective, centrally controlled prison system with progressive standards. Keve details the essential characteristics of this now mature system, guiding the reader through the historical process to the present day.
Download or read book Private Prisons in America written by Michael A. Hallett and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the auspices of a governmentally sanctioned "war on drugs," incarceration rates in the United States have risen dramatically since 1980. Increasingly, correctional administrators at all levels are turning to private, for-profit corporations to manage the swelling inmate population. Policy discussions of this trend toward prison privatization tend to focus on cost-effectiveness, contract monitoring, and enforcement, but in his Private Prisons in America, Michael A. Hallett reveals that these issues are only part of the story. Demonstrating that imprisonment serves numerous agendas other than "crime control," Hallett's analysis suggests that private prisons are best understood not as the product of increasing crime rates, but instead as the latest chapter in a troubling history of discrimination aimed primarily at African American men.
