Download or read book Big House on the Prairie written by John M. Eason and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-03-06 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now more than ever, we need to understand the social, political, and economic shifts that have driven the United States to triple its prison construction in just over three decades. John Eason goes a very considerable distance here in fulfilling this need, not by detailing the aftereffects of building huge numbers of prisons, but by vividly showing the process by which a community seeks to get a prison built in their area. What prompted him to embark on this inquiry was the insistent question of why the rapid expansion of prisons in America, why now, and why so many. He quickly learned that the prison boom is best understood from the perspective of the rural, southern towns where they tend to be placed (North Carolina has twice as many prisons as New Jersey, though both states have the same number of prisoners). And so he sets up shop, as it were, in Forrest City, Arkansas, where he moved with his family to begin the splendid fieldwork that led to this book. A major part of his story deals with the emergence of the rural ghetto, abetted by white flight, de-industrialization, the emergence of public housing, and higher proportions of blacks and Latinos. How did Forrest City become a site for its prison? Eason takes us behind the decision-making scenes, tracking the impact of stigma (a prison in my backyard-not a likely desideratum), economic development, poverty, and race, while showing power-sharing among opposed groups of elite whites vs. black race leaders. Eason situates the prison within the dynamic shifts rural economies are undergoing, and shows how racially diverse communities can achieve the siting and building of prisons in their rural ghetto. The result is a full understanding of the ways in which a prison economy takes shape and operates."
Download or read book Prison on the Prairie written by Paul Gale and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For 70 years, the Savanna Army Depot was the chief employer for a rural area in northwestern Illinois. During World War II, more than 7,000 civilians worked there. The civilians made the bombs the B-25 planes led by Jimmy Dootlittle dropped on Japan during the famous raid in 1942. When the Army ordered the depot closed in 1995, 421 people lost their jobs. A regional development authority proposed building a state prison on the depot site to replace the jobs, but several environmental groups protested. They wanted to preserve a rare prairie at the depot, saying it was pristine. The protest grew to the point where Gov. James Edgar reversed his decision on the prison. The maximum security prison was built in nearby Thomson, but it stood empty for five years because the state didn't have enough money to open it. Author Paul Gale, a former journalist, tells how the environmental groups rallied people during hearings and wrote letters to influential politicians and media members to get their message across. A rare plant called the James' Clammyweed was used as a rallying point by the envrionmentalists. Many people in the small towns near the former Army depot are still bitter over the battle. They remain convinced the former Army depot was the best site to build the prison. If it had been built when Edgar made the announcement, community leaders believe the prison would have been open now. Although the army has spent over $200 million in cleanup, much of the depot remains closed today because of the amount of contamination still present.
Download or read book The Prairie Prisons written by Walter Albin Lunden and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book From Prairie to Prison written by Sally M. Miller and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I am dangerous to the invisible government of the United States; I am dangerous to the special privileges of the United States; I am dangerous to the white slaver and to the saloonkeeper, and I thank God that at this hour I am dangerous to the war profiteers of this country who rob the people on the one hand, and rob and degrade the government on the other; and then with their pockets and wallets stuffed with the filthy, blood-stained profits of war, wrap the sacred folds of the Stars and Stripes about them and shout their blatant hypocrisy to the world. You can convince the people that I am dangerous to these men; but no jury and no judge can convince them that I am a dangerous woman to the best interests of the United States. With these words, Kate Richards O'Hare defied the court at her 1917 sentencing for violation of the Espionage Act. Her oratory only served to infuriate the judge and land her a five-year prison sentence for publicly opposing America's intervention in World War I. Her opposition to the war was only part of a long history of social criticism by this forty-one-year-old mother of four. From her childhood in Kansas and Missouri until her death in 1948, O'Hare challenged virtually all of society's institutions. In From Prairie to Prison Sally Miller reveals the fascinating story of this colorful and exuberant woman who spent her life fighting for equality and justice.
Download or read book Building the Prison State written by Heather Schoenfeld and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other industrialized nation in the world—about 1 in 100 adults, or more than 2 million people—while national spending on prisons has catapulted 400 percent. Given the vast racial disparities in incarceration, the prison system also reinforces race and class divisions. How and why did we become the world’s leading jailer? And what can we, as a society, do about it? Reframing the story of mass incarceration, Heather Schoenfeld illustrates how the unfinished task of full equality for African Americans led to a series of policy choices that expanded the government’s power to punish, even as they were designed to protect individuals from arbitrary state violence. Examining civil rights protests, prison condition lawsuits, sentencing reforms, the War on Drugs, and the rise of conservative Tea Party politics, Schoenfeld explains why politicians veered from skepticism of prisons to an embrace of incarceration as the appropriate response to crime. To reduce the number of people behind bars, Schoenfeld argues that we must transform the political incentives for imprisonment and develop a new ideological basis for punishment.
Download or read book The Prairie prisons 1930 1963 written by Walter Albin Lunden and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Confessions of a Prairie Bitch written by Alison Arngrim and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confessions of a Prairie Bitch is Alison Arngrim’s comic memoir of growing up as one of television’s most memorable characters—the devious Nellie Oleson on the hit television show Little House on the Prairie. With behind-the-scenes stories from the set, as well as tales from her bohemian upbringing in West Hollywood and her headline-making advocacy work on behalf of HIV awareness and abused children, Confessions of a Prairie Bitch is a must for fans of everything Little House: the classic television series and its many stars like Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert; Gilbert’s bestselling memoir Prairie Tale... and, of course, the beloved series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder that started it all.
Download or read book U S Penitentiary Leavenworth written by Kenneth M. LaMaster and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2008-04-14 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On July 1, 1895, under the direction of warden James French, the first federal prison was born. That same year, St. Louis architects Eames and Young went to work drawing up plans for an institution that would house the most notorious offenders in the nations history. At sunrise on March 1, 1897, 300 inmates and 30 guards marched three miles to the construction site located on the southwest corner of the military reservation. From sunup to sundown seven days a week in the hot Kansas summer to the harsh prairie winters, inmates labored building their new home. Leavenworths rich history as a gateway to the Old West is second to none. Name a famous figure such as George Armstrong Custer, John Joseph Pershing, Dwight D. Eisenhower, or Colin Powell. They have all graced the streets of this historic community. Equally pick a name of the most notorious criminals. George Machine Gun Kelly, Robert F. Stroud, Frank Nash, Frank the Enforcer Nitti, and George Buggs Moranthey all stopped by to spend time in Leavenworth.
Download or read book Hard Time written by Ted McCoy and published by Athabasca University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The success and failure of prison reform and the corresponding social history of punishment in Canada.
Download or read book Sitting Bull Prisoner of War written by Dennis C. Pope and published by SDSHS Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Sitting Bull's surrender at Fort Buford in what is now North Dakota in 1881, the United States Army transported the chief and his followers down the Missouri River to Fort Randall, roughly seventy miles west of Yankton. The famed Hunkpapa leader remained there for twenty-two months as a prisoner of war.
Download or read book Sketches in Prison Camps written by Charles C. Nott and published by . This book was released on 1865 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book You Can t Win written by Jack Black and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An amazing autobiography of a criminal from a forgotten time in american history. Jack Black was a burgler, safe-cracker, highwayman and petty thief.
Download or read book Paradise to Prison written by John J. Davis and published by Sheffield Publishing. This book was released on 1998-04-01 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No other piece of ancient Near Eastern literature that has survived the ravages of time compares favorably with the book of Genesis. Its theological perspectives and historical profiles of early man are unique. It is important not because it is oldother collections antedate it by many years-but because it completely transcends the primitive mythology of the ancient world. Reading and studying Genesis are not burdensome tasks. Its themes are varied and its personal portraits unparalleled. It immediately tackles on of man's most basic questions: What is the origin of all things? Its answer is as credible as it is captivating. From the origin of man the writer shifts attention to the fall of man and the human dilemma. The problem of evil is rarely discussed in such a manner by other ancient writers. From this point the writer concentrates on the spiritual, moral, and practical consequences of sin. Great catastrophes, such as the flood and the confusion of tongues at Babel, demonstrate God's response to human rebellion. Where in the annals of history can we find more imaginative and frank portraits than those of Abraham and his descendants? Abraham's moments of great triumph and ecstasy are not reported to the exclusion of his hours of humility and disgrace; this balanced description is quite distinct from the idealism of ancient Near Eastern historiography. The detailed descriptions of Abraham's failures, therefore, constitute a remarkable proof for the inspiration of this book. The sensitive reader cannot help but be struck by this book's great contrasting emphases: on one hand majestic, cosmological truth; on the other hand personal, intimate, and individualistic narratives of a man, a wife, and their family. While theological abstractions are common, they do not exclude personal warmth and historical objectivity. There are also great contrasts between personalities; the most significant is between God and Satan, and based on this contrast is the one between good and evil and their practical effects. The book of Genesis, therefore, is of utmost value to the scientist, the historian, and the theologian: to the scientist for its cosmology, to the historian for its early history of Israel, and to the theologian for its basic philosophical implications. But one must approach the book properly; only then can one hope to understand it, not to mention the rest of the Bible and Jesus Himself . Jesus told his hostile contemporaries that "had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" (John 5:46,47)
Download or read book Enemy Child written by Andrea Warren and published by Holiday House. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's 1941 and ten-year-old Norman Mineta is a carefree fourth grader in San Jose, California, who loves baseball, hot dogs, and Cub Scouts. But when Japanese forces attack Pearl Harbor, Norm's world is turned upside down. Corecipient of The Flora Stieglitz Straus Award A Horn Book Best Book of the Year One by one, things that he and his Japanese American family took for granted are taken away. In a matter of months they, along with everyone else of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, are forced by the government to move to internment camps, leaving everything they have known behind. At the Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming, Norm and his family live in one room in a tar paper barracks with no running water. There are lines for the communal bathroom, lines for the mess hall, and they live behind barbed wire and under the scrutiny of armed guards in watchtowers. Meticulously researched and informed by extensive interviews with Mineta himself, Enemy Child sheds light on a little-known subject of American history. Andrea Warren covers the history of early Asian immigration to the United States and provides historical context on the U.S. government's decision to imprison Japanese Americans alongside a deeply personal account of the sobering effects of that policy. Warren takes readers from sunny California to an isolated wartime prison camp and finally to the halls of Congress to tell the true story of a boy who rose from "enemy child" to a distinguished American statesman. Mineta was the first Asian mayor of a major city (San Jose) and was elected ten times to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he worked tirelessly to pass legislation, including the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. He also served as Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of Transportation. He has had requests by other authors to write his biography, but this is the first time he has said yes because he wanted young readers to know the story of America's internment camps. Enemy Child includes more than ninety photos, many provided by Norm himself, chronicling his family history and his life. Extensive backmatter includes an Afterword, bibliography, research notes, and multimedia recommendations for further information on this important topic. A California Reading Association Eureka! Nonfiction Gold Award Winner Winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award’s Children’s Reading Round Table Award for Children’s Nonfiction A Capitol Choices Noteworthy Title A Junior Library Guild Selection A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year A Bank Street Best Book of the Year - Outstanding Merit
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 Criminal Intimacy written by Regina G. Kunzel and published by . This book was released on 2008-09 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sex is usually assumed to be a closely guarded secret of prison life. But it has long been the subject of intense scrutiny by both prison administrators and reformers—as well as a source of fascination and anxiety for the American public. Historically, sex behind bars has evoked radically different responses from professionals and the public alike. In Criminal Intimacy, Regina Kunzel tracks these varying interpretations and reveals their foundational influence on modern thinking about sexuality and identity. Historians have held the fusion of sexual desire and identity to be the defining marker of sexual modernity, but sex behind bars, often involving otherwise heterosexual prisoners, calls those assumptions into question. By exploring the sexual lives of prisoners and the sexual culture of prisons over the past two centuries—along with the impact of a range of issues, including race, class, and gender; sexual violence; prisoners’ rights activism; and the HIV epidemic—Kunzel discovers a world whose surprising plurality and mutability reveals the fissures and fault lines beneath modern sexuality itself. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including physicians, psychiatrists, sociologists, correctional administrators, journalists, and prisoners themselves—as well as depictions of prison life in popular culture—Kunzel argues for the importance of the prison to the history of sexuality and for the centrality of ideas about sex and sexuality to the modern prison. In the process, she deepens and complicates our understanding of sexuality in America.
Download or read book Anamosa Penitentiary written by Richard Snavely and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1868, with Iowa fast outgrowing its only prison in Fort Madison, state lawmakers began thinking about building a new penitentiary. Several cities around the state vied for the prestige and economic benefits the new prison would provide. Anamosa, a rapidly growing town of 2,000 in east-central Iowa, was ultimately awarded the prize, in no small measure because of its proximity to some of the largest and finest dolomite limestone deposits in the world, coveted as the perfect building material for the massive institution. From 1873 until major construction ended in 1943, inmate workers literally built walls around themselves, slowly erecting a structure from the Iowa prairie whose imposing and magnificent architecture would continue to command respect and awe even to the present day. From Wild West bad man Polk Wells and boy-murderer Wesley Elkins to heinous mass murderer John Wayne Gacy, many have passed through Anamosa's iron gates and, with the quietly dedicated men and women who managed them, have contributed to the rich tapestry of Anamosa prison history.
