Download or read book Corrections and Beyond My Story of Doing Time on the Other Side of the Bars written by Dr. Ivan Godfrey and published by Fulton Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2021-09-23 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Ivan Godfrey began his career as a corrections officer in the New York State Corrections System, it was still reeling from the brutal retaliation to the prison riots at Attica. As a young African American, he grew up in the Bronx, then he worked in prisons, such as the notorious Sing-Sing Prison. In fact, Ivan often met inmates he knew on the streets from his New York City neighborhood. His memoir is a wonderful testament to his determination to strive for a better life and take care of his growing family while working in some of the most dangerous prisons in America. It is also a one-of-a-kind window into the life of a young Black prison guard as he struggled to climb the ladder of success despite inherent and overt racial barriers. Now he is an assistant professor, teaching criminal justice and behavioral science at SUNY Ulster CC, forensic mental health at Russell Sage College, and forensic social work and the criminal justice system at the University at Albany School of Social Welfare. Dr. Ivan Godfrey's memoir is an inspiring journey from the streets of the Bronx to the daily psychological and physical violence while working for over twenty years in the NY State Correction System and finally to the halls of academia.
Download or read book Reading Behind Bars written by Jill Grunenwald and published by Center Point. This book was released on 2019-09 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In December 2008, twentysomething Jill Grunenwald graduated with her master's degree in library science, ready to start living her dream of becoming a librarian. But the economy had a different idea. As the Great Recession reared its ugly head, jobs were scarce. After some searching, however, Jill was lucky enough to snag one of the few librarian gigs left in her home state of Ohio. The catch? The job was behind bars as the prison librarian at a men's minimum-security prison. Talk about baptism by fire.
Download or read book Decades Behind Bars written by Gaye D. Holman and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Life In Prison Eight Hours at a Time written by Robert Reilly and published by Tilbury House Publishers and Cadent Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Silver Medal, 2015 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards, Best New Voice* *Finalist, Memoir, 2015 Maine Literary Award* In this gripping nonfiction account, Robert Reilly provides a look inside America’s prison system unlike any other, and the way that it affects not only the prisoners themselves but also the corrections officers and their families. After 13 years of struggling in the music business, Robert Reilly found himself broke and on the edge of despair. The specter of success in the music business had become a monster about to ruin his family life. Something had to change, or something was going to break beyond repair. A chance conversation with a neighbor led him to apply, somewhat half-heartedly, for a job at the county prison. Although he hated the thought of a “real job,” a regular salary of $40,000 with benefits, and paid time off seemed like a small fortune. “Amazingly, I somehow got hired. So, in an effort to do the right thing and put my family first, I left the madness of the music business and entered the insanity of the U.S. prison system.” Robert Reilly served a seven-year term as a prison guard in Pennsylvania and Maine. Entering America’s industrial prison system in search of a way to support his young family, the struggling musician found himself in a looking-glass world where, often, only the uniforms distinguished guards from prisoners. Life in Prison chronicles the horrors of a place where justice is arbitrary, outcomes are preordained, and the private sector makes big money while the public looks away. This is Reilly’s story of doing time. To call the experience sobering would be the ultimate understatement: “As time crawls by, I become jealous of the inmates leaving the prison. I start to slip; I start to feel like I’m losing my faith. Any trace of innocence that I thought I still had starts to evaporate. I begin to feel trapped, imprisoned, locked in a dark heartbreaking world, just like an inmate.”
Download or read book Newjack written by Ted Conover and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-01-20 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR NONFICTION • An acclaimed journalist sets a new standard for bold, in-depth reporting in this first-hand account of life inside the penal system at Sing Sing. “Newjack is about as good as it gets—by turns gripping, funny, frightening, and sad.” —The Washington Post Book World When Ted Conover’s request to shadow a recruit at the New York State Corrections Officer Academy was denied, he decided to apply for a job as a prison officer himself. The result is an unprecedented work of eyewitness journalism: the account of Conover's year-long passage into storied Sing Sing prison as a rookie guard, or "newjack." As he struggles to become a good officer, Conover angers inmates, dodges blows, and attempts, in the face of overwhelming odds, to balance decency with toughness. Through his insights into the harsh culture of prison, the grueling and demeaning working conditions of the officers, and the unexpected ways the job encroaches on his own family life, we begin to see how our burgeoning prison system brutalizes everyone connected with it. An intimate portrait of a world few readers have ever experienced, Newjack is a haunting journey into a dark undercurrent of American life.
Download or read book Doing Time Like a Spy written by John Kiriakou and published by Rare Bird Books, a Vireo Book. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2016 PEN First Amendment Award Winner of the 2016 Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence Winner of the 2016 Blueprint International Whistleblowing Prize for Bravery and Integrity in the Public Interest Winner of the 2013 Peacemaker of the Year Award Winner of the 2012 Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage On February 28, 2013, after pleading guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, John Kiriakou began serving a thirty month prison sentence. His crime: blowing the whistle on the CIA's use of torture on al Qaeda prisoners. Doing Time Like a Spy is Kiriakou's memoir of his twenty-three months in prison. Using twenty life skills he learned in CIA operational training, he was able to keep himself safe and at the top of the prison social heap. Including his award-winning blog series "Letters from Loretto,"Doing Time Like a Spy is at once a searing journal of daily prison life and an alternately funny and heartbreaking commentary on the federal prison system.
Download or read book No Way Home written by Tyler Wetherall and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wetherall lived in fifteen houses and five countries by the time she was nine. She didn't think this was strange until Scotland Yard showed up, and she discovered her father was a fugitive and their family name was an alias. In 1983, the year she was born, her parents went on the run with three young children, traveling across Europe, their expenses paid for with drug money. It was over the summers spent visiting her dad in prison in California that he told her the truth: he had been a pot smuggler in the seventies, and his organization had bought in marijuana worth nearly a half billion dollars from Thailand. Here Wetherall pieces together the story of her parents' past, which ultimately helps her understand her own. -- adapted from publisher info.
Download or read book Competition for Prisons written by Julian Le Vay and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quarter of a century has passed since the Thatcher government launched one of its most controversial reforms: privately run prisons. This book offers an assessment of the successes and failures of that initiative, comparing public and private prisons, analyzing the possible and claimed benefits of competition, and looking closely at how well the government has managed the unusual quasi-market that the privatization push created. Drawing on first-person interviews with key players and his own experience working in prison finance, Julian Le Vay presents the most valuable look yet at the results of prison privatization for government, citizens, and prisoners.
Download or read book Consider the Dragonfly written by Malcolm Ivey and published by Astral Pipeline Books LLC. This book was released on 2020-10-09 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gritty, suspenseful coming-of-age novel. CJ McCallister graduated from junior high to juvenile hall before he completed eighth grade. He wasn't a bad kid. In many ways, he was a typical teenage boy: curious, awkward, friendly, and shy. So where did things go wrong? It may have been the Barocela brothers; twin bullies, relentless in their cruelty. It could have been his delusional, dope-smoking dad, or the betrayal of a close friend, or the unrequited love of a girl, or his own voracious appetite for drugs, or the ill-fated bond he forged in detention. Or maybe it was simply that his destiny lay behind the razor wire, as fixed and unavoidable as the rising sun. At eighteen, CJ was handcuffed, shackled, and headed for one of the most notorious prison systems in the nation. It was there, in the long shadows of the gun towers, among the sick and dying in the terminal unit of the prison, that he found strength, honor, kindness, and ultimately, himself. Consider the Dragonfly is the heartbreaking, inspiring story of a family fractured by addiction and mental illness, and the journey of a good kid gone bad who manages to hang onto his humanity in spite of losing everything else.
Download or read book Punishment for Sale written by Donna Selman and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010-01-16 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Punishment for Sale is the definitive modern history of private prisons, told through social, economic and political frames. The authors explore the origin of the ideas of modern privatization, the establishment of private prisons, and the efforts to keep expanding in the face of problems and bad publicity. The book provides a balanced telling of the story of private prisons and the resistance they engendered within the context of criminology, and it is intended for supplemental use in undergraduate and graduate courses in criminology, social problems, and race & ethnicity.
Download or read book Poor Your Soul written by Mira Ptacin and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At age twenty-eight, Mira Ptacin discovered she was pregnant. Though it was unplanned, she soon embraced the pregnancy and became engaged to Andrew, the father. Five months later, an ultrasound revealed birth defects that would give the child no chance of survival outside the womb. Mira was given three options: terminate her pregnancy, induce early delivery, or wait and inevitably miscarry. Mira's story is woven together with the story of her mother, who emigrated from Poland, also at the age of twenty-eight, and adopted a son, Julian. Julian would die tragically, bringing her an unimaginable grief. A memoir about loss and self-preservation, grief and recovery, and mothers and daughters, [this book] is [an] ... examination of free will, love, and the fierce bonds of family"--
Download or read book Beyond Bars written by Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D. and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-07-07 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential resource for former convicts and their families post-incarceration. The United States has the largest criminal justice system in the world, with currently over 7 million adults and juveniles in jail, prison, or community custody. Because they spend enough time in prison to disrupt their connections to their families and their communities, they are not prepared for the difficult and often life-threatening process of reentry. As a result, the percentage of these people who return to a life of crime and additional prison time escalates each year. Beyond Bars is the most current, practical, and comprehensive guide for ex-convicts and their families about managing a successful reentry into the community and includes: • Tips on how to prepare for release while still in prison • Ways to deal with family members, especially spouses and children • Finding a job • Money issues such as budgets, bank accounts, taxes, and debt • Avoiding drugs and other illicit activities • Free resources to rely on for support
Download or read book Kushiel s Dart written by Jacqueline Carey and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-03-15 with total page 930 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lush epic fantasy that inspired a generation with a single precept: Love As Thou Wilt The first book in the Kushiel's Legacy series is a novel of grandeur, luxuriance, sacrifice, betrayal, and deeply laid conspiracies. A world of cunning poets, deadly courtiers, deposed rulers and a besieged Queen, a warrior-priest, the Prince of Travelers, barbarian warlords, heroic traitors, and a truly Machiavellian villainess...all seen through the unflinching eyes of an unforgettable heroine. A nation born of angels, vast and intricate and surrounded by danger... a woman born to servitude, unknowingly given access to the secrets of the realm... Born with a scarlet mote in her left eye, Phédre nó Delaunay is sold into indentured servitude as a child. When her bond is purchased by an enigmatic nobleman, she is trained in history, theology, politics, foreign languages, the arts of pleasure. And above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Exquisite courtesan, talented spy...and unlikely heroine. But when Phédre stumbles upon a plot that threatens her homeland, Terre d'Ange, she has no choice. Betrayed into captivity in the barbarous northland of Skaldia and accompanied only by a disdainful young warrior-priest, Phédre makes a harrowing escape and an even more harrowing journey to return to her people and deliver a warning of the impending invasion. And that proves only the first step in a quest that will take her to the edge of despair and beyond. Phédre nó Delaunay is the woman who holds the keys to her realm's deadly secrets, and whose courage will decide the very future of her world. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Corrections in Ink written by Keri Blakinger and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Brave, brutal . . . a riveting story about suffering, recovery, and redemption. Inspiring and relevant.” —The New York Times An electric and unforgettable memoir about a young woman's journey—from the ice rink, to addiction and a prison sentence, to the newsroom—and how she emerged with a fierce determination to expose the broken system she experienced. Keri Blakinger always lived life at full throttle. Growing up, that meant throwing herself into competitive figure skating with an all-consuming passion that led her to nationals. But when her skating career suddenly fell apart, that meant diving into self-destruction with the intensity she once saved for the ice. For the next nine years, Keri ricocheted from one dark place to the next: living on the streets, selling drugs and sex, and shooting up between classes all while trying to hold herself together enough to finish her degree at Cornell. Then, on a cold day during her senior year, the police caught her walking down the street with a Tupperware full of heroin. Her arrest made the front page of the local news and landed her behind bars for nearly two years. There, in the Twilight Zone of New York’s jails and prisons, Keri grappled with the wreckage of her missteps and mistakes as she sobered up and searched for a better path. Along the way, she met women from all walks of life—who were all struggling through the same upside-down world of corrections. As the days ticked by, Keri came to understand how broken the justice system is and who that brokenness hurts the most. After she walked out of her cell for the last time, Keri became a reporter dedicated to exposing our flawed prisons as only an insider could. Written with searing intensity, unflinching honesty, and shocks of humor, Corrections in Ink uncovers that dark, brutal system that affects us all. Not just a story about getting out and getting off drugs, this galvanizing memoir is about the power of second chances; about who our society throws away and who we allow to reach for redemption—and how they reach for it.
Download or read book Writing My Wrongs written by Shaka Senghor and published by Convergent Books. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An “extraordinary, unforgettable” (Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow) memoir of redemption and second chances amidst America’s mass incarceration epidemic, from a member of Oprah’s SuperSoul 100 Shaka Senghor was raised in a middle-class neighborhood on Detroit’s east side during the height of the 1980s crack epidemic. An honor roll student and a natural leader, he dreamed of becoming a doctor—but at age eleven, his parents’ marriage began to unravel, and beatings from his mother worsened, which sent him on a downward spiral. He ran away from home, turned to drug dealing to survive, and ended up in prison for murder at the age of nineteen, full of anger and despair. Writing My Wrongs is the story of what came next. During his nineteen-year incarceration, seven of which were spent in solitary confinement, Senghor discovered literature, meditation, self-examination, and the kindness of others—tools he used to confront the demons of his past, forgive the people who hurt him, and begin atoning for the wrongs he had committed. Upon his release at age thirty-eight, Senghor became an activist and mentor to young men and women facing circumstances like his. His work in the community and the courage to share his story led him to fellowships at the MIT Media Lab and the Kellogg Foundation and invitations to speak at events like TED and the Aspen Ideas Festival. In equal turns, Writing My Wrongs is a page-turning portrait of life in the shadow of poverty, violence, and fear; an unforgettable story of redemption; and a compelling witness to our country’s need for rethinking its approach to crime, prison, and the men and women sent there.
Download or read book Livin the Dream written by Jack McKraken and published by Antelope Hill Originals. This book was released on 2022-09-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by former New York Corrections Officer, Jack McKraken, Livin' the Dream is a deep dive into the beating heart of American Corrections. This book shines a light on the absurdities, inadequacies, and organized chaos of the system that stands between ordinary Americans and the worst violent offenders. Author of science-fiction novel Beyond Mortal Measure, Jack McKraken breaks into the world of nonfiction writing from his own perspective as he describes a ground-level view of a single Corrections Officer while simultaneously examining the entirety of the US prison system. From the tedium of the day-to-day rounds to the politics of the NYSCOPBA (New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association) McKraken depicts the conditions and constraints within which Correction Officers are forced to operate by an entrenched bureaucracy. The book describes prisoner interactions and altercations candidly, often humorously, leaving the reader with a unique perspective into American Justice. Antelope Hill is proud to publish Livin' the Dream as its second original work. Jack McKraken's work is not just a memoir of exciting anecdotes and useful tips, but an account of how one can survive and keep their sanity within one of the most soul-crushing settings known to man. This title is a must-read for anyone who may find themselves in prison, regardless of which side of the bars.
Download or read book Are Prisons Obsolete written by Angela Y. Davis and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. For generations of Americans, the abolition of slavery was sheerest illusion. Similarly,the entrenched system of racial segregation seemed to last forever, and generations lived in the midst of the practice, with few predicting its passage from custom. The brutal, exploitative (dare one say lucrative?) convict-lease system that succeeded formal slavery reaped millions to southern jurisdictions (and untold miseries for tens of thousands of men, and women). Few predicted its passing from the American penal landscape. Davis expertly argues how social movements transformed these social, political and cultural institutions, and made such practices untenable. In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration", and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.
