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 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 The Hot House written by Pete Earley and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 493 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 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 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 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 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 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 Imprisoning Resistance written by Bree Carlton and published by Institute of Criminology. This book was released on 2007 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nominated in the True Crime Category for the 8th Davitt Awards. These awards recognise the best crime novels and true crime books written by Australian women, published in 2007. 29 October 2007 marks twenty years since the death of five prisoners in a riot and fire in the infamous Jika Jika high-security unit. This book resurrects these events and invites us to learn urgent lessons in our current age of supermax and privatised prisons, detention of asylum seekers and the controversial use of indefinite detention under the banner of a 'war on terror'. Imprisoning Resistance provides an experiential account of life and death in the controversial Pentridge Prison Jika Jika High-Security Unit in Victoria during the 1980s. One of Australia's first hi-tech supermax prisons, Jika Jika was designed to house and manage the system's 'worst of the worst' prisoners. Several years of deaths in custody, multiple escapes, assaults, murders, prisoner campaigns and protests, hunger strikes and allegations of prison staff brutality escalated in 1987 to a dramatic protest fire that resulted in the deaths of five prisoners. The prison was closed and a series of inquiries were commissioned. Bree Carlton revisits this uncomfortable past and reconstructs events leading up to and surrounding the fire and deaths, while critically analysing official responses to the discreditable episodes, crises and deaths that plagued Jika Jika.

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 Behind Bars written by Jeffrey Ian Ross and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best ways to avoid being beaten, sexually abused, or getting killed; US origin.

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 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 Supermax Prison written by Jd Rakesh Chandra MD and published by History Publishing Company LLC. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tamms supermax prison reduced violence, protected the staff and inmates, and provided the mental health needs of a unique population. But time eroded public confidence in a facility that imposed long-term solitary confinement years beyond acceptable practice. While there are stories of unimaginable violence, sadness, and injustice, there are hues of happiness and hope. We present the good and bad, the certain and unimaginable. The reader can choose sides on the issue, or embrace the broader story of "Supermax Prison: Controlling the most dangerous criminals."

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

Download or read book The Big House written by James (Jim) H. Bruton and published by Voyageur Press. This book was released on 2004-07-26 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The warden tells all! "The Big House" is a frightening insiders look at life in a world-famous, maximum-security prison and the first to be told from the wardens perspective. Let Warden James H. Bruton lead you beyond the massive coils of razor ribbon and into the cell blocks of some of Americas most dangerous prisoners. Experience the shocking reality of working everyday with murderers, robbers, rapists, and thieves. Meet the inmates who have killed or maimed and who would take human life in a heartbeat. Who are they, and what are they all about? Walk inside with the Warden to this world of unimaginable ferocity and numbing reality. Experience in graphic detail the grim and sinister realities of prison existence as you come face-to-face with child molesters, predators, drug smugglers, and gang members. Learn the management techniques of controlling the most violent and difficult-to-manage offenders as well as why the staffs approach to treating inmates has made Oak Park Heights supermax prison one of the safest and most secure prisons in existence. About the Author: Jim Bruton was the warden at Oak Park Heights for five years, from 1996-2001. He worked in correctional facilities for 14 years and has 35 years of experience in the field of corrections. He is an adjunct faculty member in Criminal Justice/Sociology at five Twin Cities colleges/universities.