What do you reckon to our Prisons? A waste of time - just universities of crime - more like 3* hotels - food better than at home - more drugs on those Landings than on our streets - sentences too short, don't even fit the crime. These people are criminals and should be punished: that should teach them - they are released far too soon and come out worse than they went in. Lock them up and throw away the key. We are safer when they are Inside: we can get on with our lives. So goes the common opinion: include gyms, football fields, TVs and mobile phones and we turn away in disgust. It's much harder if you have been at the receiving end of crime, your heart weighed down with grief or your anger like an imminent volcanic eruption as you scream for justice and revenge.

Understandable: but we must beware lest we lock ourselves up in the high-walled prison of our minds and emotions - throwing away that key.

Both prisons need a rethink before true release and reconciled living are possible. Discipline Inside Jail: - Yes, but cruelty only worsens a situation already bad enough. The facilities that grate with you can work towards change for those who choose that route. You say you feel safer now they' are Inside: the hole they left will soon be filled by others. Do you hope for a peaceful, reconciled life? Not yet, maybe: one day But most of these people will be released back into society: then what?

This book is a must read for anyone connected with prisons, perhaps especially for those who turn a blind eye, a deaf ear - through fear or not realising how redemptive involvement can be.

It is shocking that although just one per cent of children are taken into care by local authori-ties, almost 30 per cent of prisoners have been in care. Ben Ashcroft's heart-rending account of abandonment, loneliness and rejection in family life, the care system and beyond begins at age nine and ends with him turning his life around after being moved from pillar to post, crime, drugs, 'going missing' and custody. Ten years on, he works to motivate young people from similar backgrounds to believe that they can do the same; that whatever life throws at them they should "Never, ever, give up". It is also a warning to parents, professionals and carers alike: to listen to what young people have to say, to make time for and reassure them and to recog-nise the often small but important things that make a difference in the bewildering world of growing-up.

Originally published as a series on Reality Sandwich and The Huffington Post, Exile Nation is a work of "spiritual journalism" that grapples with the themes of drugs, prisons, politics, and spirituality through Shaw's personal story. In 2005, Shaw was arrested in Chicago for possession of MDMA and was sent to prison for one year. Shaw not only looks at the current prison system and its many destructive flaws, but also at how American culture regards criminals and those who live outside of society. He begins his story at Chicago's Cook County Jail, and uses its sprawling, highly corrupt infrastructure to build upon his overarching argument. This is an insider's look at the forgotten or excluded segments of our society, the disenfranchised lifestyles and subcultures existing in what Shaw calls the "exile nation." They are those who lost some or all of their ability to participate in the full opportunities of society because of an arrest or conviction for a non-violent, drug-related, or "moral" offense, those who cannot participate in the credit economy, and those with lifestyle choices that involve radical politics and sexuality, cognitive liberty, and unorthodox spiritual and healing practices. Together they make up the new "evolutionary counterculture" of the most significant epoch in human history.

Since 2002, the United States has operated military detention facilities at its Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold individuals detained during overseas counter-terrorism operations. In 2009, the President directed the closure of these facilities within one year. Since then, a number of statues have prohibited the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States. This book describes the current Guantanamo Bay detention facilities and infrastructure; examines the DoD corrections facilities and factors to be considered if these facilities were used to hold the detainees; and discusses other security and legal considerations.

He was a suspected Cold War spy. She became the glamorous KGB double agent in a Bond movie. When a prisoner writes to a movie star, the best he can hope for is a signed photo. But when Alex wrote to the glamorous Fiona Fullerton she was beguiled by the artistry of his letters and poems. In this heartfelt memoir, Fiona Fullerton recalls-for the first time-her 12 year correspondence with Prisoner 789959 Alexander Alexandrowicz -including his wise counsel about her marriage, divorce and career at the forefront of cinema, TV and theatre. Based on their original letters, the narrative is one of contrasts-about a man in the darkest days of his prolonged incarceration and a woman surrounded by the brightest lights of show business. Shocked by his long sentence, Alex protested his innocence and railed against the system, often from solitary confinement-whilst she roamed the world, a celebrity and a nomad. From this unlikely juxtaposition developed the friendship at the centre of this book. The true story of how two people from social extremes forged a 30 year bond of friendship against all odds. It also tells of how they came to rely on each other and the author's search for him after he disappeared. 'Have you ever heard of Nadejda Philaretovna von Meck? She and Tchaikovsky were corresponding for years, they never met-and yet he produced his finest work for her. My finest work shall be for you... It is you alone who has given me strength while I have been in prison, the strength to restore lost and dying hope into burning resolution'. 'Yes, the bond between us will get stronger, Alex. It will never die now. I'll always be here when you need me. I need you too, don't forget, so together we'll muddle through'. Reviews 'What a lovely, lovely book... compelling, gripping, moving, insightful': Erwin James, Guardian correspondent. Author Fiona Fullerton was one of Britain's most well known and versatile actresses, starring in movies, television and West End theatres, holding a high profile media presence for over 20 years. She then became a Property Columnist, writer and property investment guru, reaching a vastly different audience. Foreword Edward Fitzgerald CBE QC is one of the UK's leading lawyers specialising in criminal law, public law and international human rights law. He has featured in many leading cases at home and abroad. He was Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year in 2009, Silk of the Year in 2005 and winner of The Times Justice Human Rights Award in 1998.

To date, knowledge of the everyday world of the juvenile correction institution has been extremely sparse. Compassionate Confinement brings to light the challenges and complexities inherent in the U.S. system of juvenile corrections. Building on over a year of field work at a boys' residential facility, Laura S. Abrams and Ben Anderson-Nathe provide a context for contemporary institutions and highlight some of the system's most troubling tensions. This ethnographic text utilizes narratives, observations, and case examples to illustrate the strain between treatment and correctional paradigms and the mixed messages regarding gender identity and masculinity that the youths are expected to navigate. Within this context, the authors use the boys' stories to show various and unexpected pathways toward behavior change. While some residents clearly seized opportunities for self-transformation, others manipulated their way toward release, and faced substantial challenges when they returned home. Compassionate Confinement concludes with recommendations for rehabilitating this notoriously troubled system in light of the experiences of its most vulnerable stakeholders.

This book brings together a collection of social justice scholars and activists who take Foucault's concept of discipline and punishment to explain how prisons are constructed in society from nursing homes to zoos. This book expands the concept of prison to include any institution that dominates, oppresses, and controls. Criminologists and others, who have been concerned with reforming or dismantling the criminal justice system, have mostly avoided to look at larger carceral structures in society. In this book, for example, scholars and activists question the way patriarchy has incapacitated women and imagine the deinstitutionalization of people with disabilities. In a time when popular sentiment critiques the dominant role of the elites (the "one percenters"), the state's role in policing dissenting voices, school children, LGBTQ persons, people of color, and American Indian Nations, needs to be investigated. A prison, as defined in this book, is an institution or system that oppresses and does not allow freedom for a particular group. Within this definition, we include the imprisonment of nonhuman animals and plants, which are too often overlooked.

"Buried Lives" offers the first critical examination of the experience of imprisonment in early America. These interdisciplinary essays investigate several carceral institutions to show how confinement shaped identity, politics, and the social imaginary both in the colonies and in the new nation. The historians and literary scholars included in this volume offer a complement and corrective to conventional understandings of incarceration that privilege the intentions of those in power over the experiences of prisoners.
Considering such varied settings as jails, penitentiaries, almshouses, workhouses, floating prison ships, and plantations, the contributors reconstruct the struggles of people imprisoned in locations from Antigua to Boston. The essays draw upon a rich array of archival sources from the seventeenth century to the eve of the Civil War, including warden logs, petitions, execution sermons, physicians' clinical notes, private letters, newspaper articles, runaway slave advertisements, and legal documents. Through the voices, bodies, and texts of the incarcerated, "Buried Lives" reveals the largely ignored experiences of inmates who contested their subjection to regimes of power.

Jere Van Dyk was on the wrong side of the border. He and three Afghan guides had crossed into the tribal areas of Pakistan, where no Westerner had ventured for years, hoping to reach the home of a local chieftain by nightfall. But then a dozen armed men in black turbans appeared over the crest of a hill.

"Captive" is Van Dyk's searing account of his forty-five days in a Taliban prison, and it is gripping and terrifying in the tradition of the best prison literature. The main action takes place in a single room, cut off from the outside world, where Van Dyk feels he can trust nobody--not his jailers, not his guides (who he fears may have betrayed him), and certainly not the charismatic Taliban leader whose fleeting appearances carry the hope of redemption as well as the prospect of immediate, violent death.

Van Dyk went to the tribal areas to investigate the challenges facing America there. His story is of a deeper, more personal challenge, an unforgettable tale of human endurance.

In April 1981, two white Texas prison officials died at the hands of a black inmate at the Ellis prison farm near Huntsville. Warden Wallace Pack and farm manager Billy Moore were the highest-ranking Texas prison officials ever to die in the line of duty. The warden was drowned face down in a ditch. The farm manager was shot once in the head with the warden's gun. The man who admitted to killing them, a burglar and robber named Eroy Brown, surrendered meekly, claiming self-defense. In any other era of Texas prison history, Brown's fate would have seemed certain: execution. But in 1980, federal judge William Wayne Justice had issued a sweeping civil rights ruling in which he found that prison officials had systematically and often brutally violated the rights of Texas inmates. In the light of that landmark prison civil rights case, Ruiz v. Estelle, Brown had a chance of being believed. The Trials of Eroy Brown, the first book devoted to Brown's astonishing defense, is based on trial documents, exhibits, and journalistic accounts of Brown's three trials, which ended in his acquittal. Michael Berryhill presents Brown's story in his own words, set against the backdrop of the chilling plantation mentality of Texas prisons. Brown's attorneys-Craig Washington, Bill Habern, and Tim Sloan-undertook heroic strategies to defend him, even when the state refused to pay their fees. The Trials of Eroy Brown tells a landmark story of prison civil rights and the collapse of Jim Crow justice in Texas.

The cult guide to UK prisons by Carl Cattermole – now fully updated and featuring contributions from female and LGBTQI prisoners, as well as from family on the outside.

Contains:

Blood – but not as much as you might imagine
Sweat – and the prisons no longer provide soap
Tears – because prison has created a mental health crisis
Humanity – and how to stop the institution destroying it

Featuring contributors Sarah Jake Baker, Jon Gulliver, Darcey Hartley, Julia Howard, Elliot Murawski and Lisa Selby.

‘Essential reading’
Will Self

‘We’re in the justice dark ages and Cattermole’s great book switches on the lights’
Dr Theo Kindynis, Lecturer in Criminology Goldsmiths, University of London

‘It has the potential to change a lot of people’s lives for the better’
Daniel Godden, Partner at Berkeley Square Solicitors’

IRA Jailbreaks 1918-1921 features the factual accounts of 25 daring rescues, rescue attempts and jailbreaks which raised the morale of nationalist Ireland and brought world-wide ridicule and discredit on the prison and internment camp systems in Britain and Ireland. With stories of their resistance to the degrading criminal code by the political prisoners, the hunger strikes and jail riots, the savage beatings and punishments the prisoners suffered during their incarceration, their accounts offer a window on the world of the men who fought and were imprisoned during the struggle for Ireland's independence. Here is history documented by the men who made it.

A unique and telling insight into life in a claustrophobic and sometimes violent atmosphere. An ideal primer on women's issues within the penal system. With 8 pages of colour illustrations.

Follows forty juvenile male offenders, from their first-time admissions to the Ohio system through their incarceration and reentry into the community. The author conducted three lengthy interviews with each of these youth over a period of two and a half years. These interviews bring alive their attitudes and day-to-day prison experiences, as well as the intricate connections between life on the inside and life on the outside. Status is key to everyday life in prison, and it is often played out in demonstrations of masculinity, misogyny, and violence. Some gangs and some ""area codes"" (as the old neighborhoods are called) are seen as tougher than others and are given more respect. Even letters from family members and girlfriends are important signs of whether a prisoner matters: one young man says, ""I'd write letters every day to people to beg 'em to write me back."" Another reports, ""There would be people in there writing girls, saying, hey, write me this nasty letter of things we're going to do and things we did. And they'd write back with these letters. And now he'll get to walk around with his letter bragging, like, hey, check this out. These are the kind of girls I got."" Incarcerated youth also work hard at impression management. Coping with prison requires a young man to present one face to fellow prisoners and another to the authorities who will decide his release date. The author pays substantial attention to the programs youth are offered, including those focusing on education, anger management, job training, and parenting skills. Another section looks at contact between incarcerated youth and the outside world, including a discussion of the impact of incarceration on families. Based on her extensive knowledge of policies in other states, the author also provides a broad overview of the juvenile justice system nationally, describing how the system is organized, administered, and funded. Readers are taken through the juvenile justice process from conviction through parole with special attention paid to new state initiatives and sentencing structures.|Locked Up, Locked Out follows forty juvenile male offenders, from their first-time admissions to the Ohio system through their incarceration and re-entry into the community. The author conducted three lengthy interviews with each of these youth over a period of two and a half years. These interviews bring alive their attitudes and day-to-day prison experiences, as well as the intricate connections between life on the inside and life on the outside. Status is key to everyday life in prison, and it is often played out in demonstrations of masculinity, misogyny, and violence. Some gangs and some ""area codes"" (as the old neighborhoods are called) are seen as tougher than others and are given more respect. Even letters from family members and girlfriends are important signs of whether a prisoner matters: one young man says, ""I'd write letters every day to people to beg 'em to write me back."" Another reports, ""There would be people in there writing girls, saying, hey, write me this nasty letter of things we're going to do and things we did. And they'd write back with these letters. And now he'll get to walk around with his letter bragging, like, hey, check this out. These are the kind of girls I got."" Incarcerated youth also work hard at impression management. Coping with prison requires a young man to present one face to fellow prisoners and another to the authorities who will decide his release date. The author pays substantial attention to the programs youth are offered, including those focusing on education, anger management, job training, and parenting skills. Another section looks at contact between incarcerated youth and the outside world, including a discussion of the impact of incarceration on families. Based on her extensive knowledge of policies in other states, the author also provides a broad overview of the juvenile justice system nationally, describing how the system is organized, administered, and funded. Readers are taken through the juvenile justice process from conviction through parole with special attention paid to new state initiatives and sentencing structures.

Follows forty juvenile male offenders, from their first-time admissions to the Ohio system through their incarceration and reentry into the community. The author conducted three lengthy interviews with each of these youth over a period of two and a half years. These interviews bring alive their attitudes and day-to-day prison experiences, as well as the intricate connections between life on the inside and life on the outside. Status is key to everyday life in prison, and it is often played out in demonstrations of masculinity, misogyny, and violence. Some gangs and some ""area codes"" (as the old neighborhoods are called) are seen as tougher than others and are given more respect. Even letters from family members and girlfriends are important signs of whether a prisoner matters: one young man says, ""I'd write letters every day to people to beg 'em to write me back."" Another reports, ""There would be people in there writing girls, saying, hey, write me this nasty letter of things we're going to do and things we did. And they'd write back with these letters. And now he'll get to walk around with his letter bragging, like, hey, check this out. These are the kind of girls I got."" Incarcerated youth also work hard at impression management. Coping with prison requires a young man to present one face to fellow prisoners and another to the authorities who will decide his release date. The author pays substantial attention to the programs youth are offered, including those focusing on education, anger management, job training, and parenting skills. Another section looks at contact between incarcerated youth and the outside world, including a discussion of the impact of incarceration on families. Based on her extensive knowledge of policies in other states, the author also provides a broad overview of the juvenile justice system nationally, describing how the system is organized, administered, and funded. Readers are taken through the juvenile justice process from conviction through parole with special attention paid to new state initiatives and sentencing structures.|Locked Up, Locked Out follows forty juvenile male offenders, from their first-time admissions to the Ohio system through their incarceration and re-entry into the community. The author conducted three lengthy interviews with each of these youth over a period of two and a half years. These interviews bring alive their attitudes and day-to-day prison experiences, as well as the intricate connections between life on the inside and life on the outside. Status is key to everyday life in prison, and it is often played out in demonstrations of masculinity, misogyny, and violence. Some gangs and some ""area codes"" (as the old neighborhoods are called) are seen as tougher than others and are given more respect. Even letters from family members and girlfriends are important signs of whether a prisoner matters: one young man says, ""I'd write letters every day to people to beg 'em to write me back."" Another reports, ""There would be people in there writing girls, saying, hey, write me this nasty letter of things we're going to do and things we did. And they'd write back with these letters. And now he'll get to walk around with his letter bragging, like, hey, check this out. These are the kind of girls I got."" Incarcerated youth also work hard at impression management. Coping with prison requires a young man to present one face to fellow prisoners and another to the authorities who will decide his release date. The author pays substantial attention to the programs youth are offered, including those focusing on education, anger management, job training, and parenting skills. Another section looks at contact between incarcerated youth and the outside world, including a discussion of the impact of incarceration on families. Based on her extensive knowledge of policies in other states, the author also provides a broad overview of the juvenile justice system nationally, describing how the system is organized, administered, and funded. Readers are taken through the juvenile justice process from conviction through parole with special attention paid to new state initiatives and sentencing structures.

Women prisoners gain insight and inspiration through their creative reading practices. Drawing on extensive interviews with ninety-four women prisoners, Megan Sweeney examines how incarcerated women use available reading materials to come to terms with their pasts, negotiate their present experiences, and reach toward different futures. Foregrounding the voices of African American women, Sweeney analyzes how prisoners read three popular genres: narratives of victimization, urban crime fiction, and self-help books. She outlines the history of reading and education in U.S. prisons, highlighting how the increasing dehumanization of prisoners has resulted in diminished prison libraries and restricted opportunities for reading. Although penal officials have sometimes endorsed reading as a means to control prisoners, Sweeney illuminates the resourceful ways in which prisoners educate and empower themselves through reading. Given the scarcity of counseling and education in prisons, Sweeney argues that women use books to make meaning from their experiences, to gain guidance and support, to experiment with new ways of being, and to maintain connections with the world.

Norman Parker spent twenty-five years of his life in a high security Category A prison. Convicted of murder and manslaughter in the 1970s, he was sentenced to life at the notorious Parkhurst Prison. An institution filled with the most sinister and violent criminals, Parkhurst is certainly not for the faint-hearted. Norman Parker has certainly seen a lot during his time on the inside, and this is his complete collection of tales from behind the bars. During his gruelling years on the inside, he encountered some of the highest-profile criminals in Britain, from the Kray twins to the Great Train Robbers. With so many dangerous characters, and their deep and dark pasts, there are plenty of stories to tell. From a real-life Hannibal Lector and his murderous cannibal past to a petty thief whose experiences in prison turned him into a brutal and cold-hearted killer. The IRA bomber who deems theft as morally wrong and Vic, a loose cannon who proved that prison was no safer than the outside world as inmates feared for their lives. "The Complete Parkhurst Tales" is a shockingly powerful and intimate portrayal of the prison system is filled with Norman Parker's sharp intelligence and witty observations on every aspect of the secret world in one of Britain's toughest jails.

The United States has more than two million people locked away in federal, state, and local prisons. Although most of the U.S. population is non-Hispanic and white, the vast majority of the incarcerated-and policed-is not. In this compelling collection, scholars, activists, and current and former prisoners examine the sensibilities that enable a penal democracy to thrive. Some pieces are new to this volume; others are classic critiques of U.S. state power. Through biography, diary entries, and criticism, the contributors collectively assert that the United States wages war against enemies abroad and against its own people at home.Contributors consider the interning or policing of citizens of color, the activism of radicals, structural racism, destruction and death in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, and the FBI Counterintelligence Program designed to quash domestic dissent. Among the first-person accounts are an interview with Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a Black Panther and former political prisoner; a portrayal of life in prison by a Plowshares nun jailed for her antinuclear and antiwar activism; a discussion of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement by one of its members, now serving a seventy-year prison sentence for sedition; and an excerpt from a 1970 letter by the Black Panther George Jackson chronicling the abuses of inmates in California's Soledad Prison. Warfare in the American Homeland also includes the first English translation of an excerpt from a pamphlet by Michel Foucault and others. They argue that the 1971 shooting of George Jackson by prison guards was a murder premeditated in response to human-rights and justice organizing by black and brown prisoners and their supporters. Contributors. Hishaam Aidi, Dhoruba Bin Wahad (Richard Moore), Marilyn Buck, Marshall Eddie Conway, Susie Day, Daniel Defert, Madeleine Dwertman, Michel Foucault, Carol Gilbert, Sirene Harb, Rose Heyer, George Jackson, Joy James, Manning Marable, William F. Pinar, Oscar Lopez Rivera, Dylan Rodriguez, Jared Sexton, Catherine voen Bulow, Laura Whitehorn, Frank B. Wilderson III

Prisons are on the increase from the United States to China, as ever-larger proportions of humanity find themselves behind bars. While prisons now span the world, we know little about their history in global perspective. Rather than interpreting the prison's proliferation as the predictable result of globalization, Cultures of Confinement underlines the fact that the prison was never simply imposed by colonial powers or copied by elites eager to emulate the West, but was reinvented and transformed by a host of local factors, its success being dependent on its very flexibility. Complex cultural negotiations took place in encounters between different parts of the world, and rather than assigning a passive role to Latin America, Asia, and Africa, the authors of this book point out the acts of resistance or appropriation that altered the social practices associated with confinement. The prison, in short, was understood in culturally specific ways and reinvented in a variety of local contexts examined here for the first time in global perspective.

This strong indictment of the current prison system, undertaken by two respected experts on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee, traces the history and features of our penal system, offers strong ethical and moral assessments of it, and lays out a whole new paradigm of criminal justice based on restorative justice and reconciliation. The book puts forward a 12-point plan for immediate changes. "Beyond Prisons" opens a long-needed national dialogue on our responsibilities as citizens and as a nation to provide remediation rather than mere retributive incarceration, answerable to the common good and the justice of God.

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE FOR SURVIVING LIFE IN PRISON Charles Bronson knows more about life in prison than anyone else in Britain - on either side of the bars. Jailed originally in 1974, his life since then has been once unbroken stretch of over forty-five years, much of it in solitary confinement, moved repeatedly as prison after prison failed to contain his explosive temper. It would be enough to break an ordinary man - but Bronson is no ordinary man, and this is no ordinary prison diary. Written by our most notorious prisoner, Behind Bars is Bronson's irreverent, hard-hitting and darkly funny guide to life in Britain's penal institutions. From the correct way to brew vintage prison 'hooch' and how to keep the screws from finding it, to taming techniques for prison wildlife that may be your only friends on long stretches in solitary; from the fastest way to win a canteen fight to how to plan a prison wedding, this book tells you everything you need to know - and a few things you don't - about what goes on behind the locked doors of Britain's historic (and sometimes pre-historic) jail cells. Don't get nicked without it.

Containing 200 archive images from the NCCL Galleries of Justice in Nottingham, this book is intended for those with an interest in the history of prisons and prison life in Britain from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.

Leading edge information and ideas from two of the UK's most respected practitioners and authorities. A handbook for people who want to make a difference when working with prisoners. It suggests the tools for this and offers guidance - and is wholly up to speed with what is happening in UK prisons. * Essential reading for every RJ practitioner and student * One of the most important penal reform books for years - Part of a major initiative across UK prisons * Designed to be used in conjunction with the free toolkits available for download from www.WatersidePress.co.uk/RJTools Restorative Justice in Prisons was launched at Brixton Prison in 2006. Prison as an institution is sometimes taken to represent the opposite of restorative justice. The culture of prisons includes coercion, highly structured and controlled regimes, banishment achieved through physical separation, and blame and punishment - whereas restorative justice values empowerment, voluntarism, respect, and treating people as individuals. Recent developments in some prisons demonstrate a far more welcoming environment for restorative work. Examples such as reaching out to victims of crime, providing prisoners with a range of opportunities to make amends and experimenting with mediation in response to conflicts within prisons show that it is possible to implement restorative justice principles in everyday prison activities. Guided by restorative justice, prisons can become places of healing and personal transformation, serving the community as well as those directly affected by crime: victims and offenders. This new book advocates the further expansion of restorative justice in prisons. Building on a widespread interest in the concept and its potential, the authors have produced a guide to enable prisons and the practitioners who work in and with them to translate the theory into action. Reviews 'This book is evidence that restorative approaches have much to offer the prison services in seeking to make their operations effective in meeting prisoner and public needs ...It successfully translates theory into practice and provides a model for organisational and cultural change in prisons': International Review of Victimology 'What strikes you as you read through this text is the sheer simplicity with which Edgar and Newell have captured the changes that are so apparently needed in the prison system today': Andy Bain, Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth

More than two million people are currently imprisoned in the United States, and the nation's incarceration rate is now the highest in the world. The dramatic rise and consolidation of America's prison system has devastated lives and communities. But it has also transformed prisons into primary sites of radical political discourse and resistance as they have become home to a growing number of writers, activists, poets, educators, and other intellectuals who offer radical critiques of American society both within and beyond the prison walls.
In "Forced Passages," Dylan Rodriguez argues that the cultural production of such imprisoned intellectuals as Mumia Abu-Jamal, Angela Davis, Leonard Peltier, George Jackson, Jose Solis Jordan, Ramsey Muniz, Viet Mike Ngo, and Marilyn Buck should be understood as a social and intellectual movement in and of itself, unique in context and substance. Rodriguez engages with a wide range of texts, including correspondence, memoirs, essays, poetry, communiques, visual art, and legal writing, drawing on published works by widely recognized figures and by individuals outside the public's field of political vision or concern. Throughout, Rodriguez focuses on the conditions under which imprisoned intellectuals live and work, and he explores how incarceration shapes the ways in which insurgent knowledge is created, disseminated, and received.
More than a series of close readings of prison literature, "Forced Passages" identifies and traces the discrete lineage of radical prison thought since the 1970s, one formed by the logic of state violence and by the endemic racism of the criminal justice system.
Dylan Rodriguez is assistant professor of ethnicstudies at the University of California, Riverside.