The Puzzle Of Prison Order

Author : David Skarbek
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0190672498
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Puzzle of Prison Order written by David Skarbek and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people think prisons are all the same-rows of cells filled with violent men who officials rule with an iron fist. Yet, life behind bars varies in incredible ways. In some facilities, prison officials govern with care and attention to prisoners' needs. In others, officials have remarkably little influence on the everyday life of prisoners, sometimes not even providing necessities like food and clean water. Why does prison social order around the world look so remarkably different? In The Puzzle of Prison Order, David Skarbek develops a theory of why prisons and prison life vary so much. He finds that how they're governed-sometimes by the state, and sometimes by the prisoners-matters the most. He investigates life in a wide array of prisons-in Brazil, Bolivia, Norway, a prisoner of war camp, England and Wales, women's prisons in California, and a gay and transgender housing unit in the Los Angeles County Jail-to understand the hierarchy of life on the inside. Drawing on economics and a vast empirical literature on legal systems, Skarbek offers a framework to not only understand why life on the inside varies in such fascinating and novel ways, but also how social order evolves and takes root behind bars.

Author : David Skarbek
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019932851X
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Social Order of the Underworld written by David Skarbek and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When most people think of prison gangs, they think of chaotic bands of violent, racist thugs. Few people think of gangs as sophisticated organizations (often with elaborate written constitutions) that regulate the prison black market, adjudicate conflicts, and strategically balance the competing demands of inmates, gang members, and correctional officers. Yet as David Skarbek argues, gangs form to create order among outlaws, producing alternative governance institutions to facilitate illegal activity. He uses economics to explore the secret world of the convict culture, inmate hierarchy, and prison gang politics, and to explain why prison gangs form, how formal institutions affect them, and why they have a powerful influence over crime even beyond prison walls. The ramifications of his findings extend far beyond the seemingly irrational and often tragic society of captives. They also illuminate how social and political order can emerge in conditions where the traditional institutions of governance do not exist.

Author : Avi Steinberg
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0767931319
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Running the Books written by Avi Steinberg and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Avi Steinberg is stumped. After defecting from yeshiva to attend Harvard, he has nothing but a senior thesis on Bugs Bunny to show for himself. While his friends and classmates advance in the world, Steinberg remains stuck at a crossroads, his “romantic” existence as a freelance obituary writer no longer cutting it. Seeking direction (and dental insurance) Steinberg takes a job running the library counter at a Boston prison. He is quickly drawn into the community of outcasts that forms among his bookshelves—an assortment of quirky regulars, including con men, pimps, minor prophets, even ghosts—all searching for the perfect book and a connection to the outside world. Steinberg recounts their daily dramas with heartbreak and humor in this one-of-a-kind memoir—a piercing exploration of prison culture and an entertaining tale of one young man’s earnest attempt to find his place in the world.

Author : Bell Gale Chevigny
Publisher : Skyhorse
ISBN 13 : 1628722185
Total Pages : 574 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Doing Time written by Bell Gale Chevigny and published by Skyhorse. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Doing time.” For prison writers, it means more than serving a sentence; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one’s humanity. For the last quarter century the prestigious writers’ organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. Bell Chevigny, a former prison teacher, has selected the best of these submissions from over the last 25 years to create Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing—a vital work, demonstrating that prison writing is a vibrant part of American literature. This new edition will contain updated biographies of all contributors. The 51 original prisoners contributing to this volume deliver surprising tales, lyrics, and dispatches from an alien world covering the life span of imprisonment, from terrifying initiations to poignant friendships, from confrontations with family to death row, and sometimes share extraordinary breakthroughs. With 1.8 million men and women—roughly the population of Houston—In American jails and prisons, we must listen to “this small country of throwaway people,” in Prejean’s words. Doing Time frees them from their sentence of silence. We owe it to ourselves to listen to their voices.

Author : Joan Petersilia
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199888949
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book When Prisoners Come Home written by Joan Petersilia and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-21 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every year, hundreds of thousands of jailed Americans leave prison and return to society. Largely uneducated, unskilled, often without family support, and with the stigma of a prison record hanging over them, many if not most will experience serious social and psychological problems after release. Fewer than one in three prisoners receive substance abuse or mental health treatment while incarcerated, and each year fewer and fewer participate in the dwindling number of vocational or educational pre-release programs, leaving many all but unemployable. Not surprisingly, the great majority is rearrested, most within six months of their release. What happens when all those sent down the river come back up--and out? As long as there have been prisons, society has struggled with how best to help prisoners reintegrate once released. But the current situation is unprecedented. As a result of the quadrupling of the American prison population in the last quarter century, the number of returning offenders dwarfs anything in America's history. What happens when a large percentage of inner-city men, mostly Black and Hispanic, are regularly extracted, imprisoned, and then returned a few years later in worse shape and with dimmer prospects than when they committed the crime resulting in their imprisonment? What toll does this constant "churning" exact on a community? And what do these trends portend for public safety? A crisis looms, and the criminal justice and social welfare system is wholly unprepared to confront it. Drawing on dozens of interviews with inmates, former prisoners, and prison officials, Joan Petersilia convincingly shows us how the current system is failing, and failing badly. Unwilling merely to sound the alarm, Petersilia explores the harsh realities of prisoner reentry and offers specific solutions to prepare inmates for release, reduce recidivism, and restore them to full citizenship, while never losing sight of the demands of public safety. As the number of ex-convicts in America continues to grow, their systemic marginalization threatens the very society their imprisonment was meant to protect. America spent the last decade debating who should go to prison and for how long. Now it's time to decide what to do when prisoners come home.

Author : Christine Montross
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143110667
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Waiting for an Echo written by Christine Montross and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A haunting and harrowing indictment . . . [a] significant achievement.” —The New York Times Book Review L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist * New York Times Book Review Paperback Row * Time Best New Books July 2020 Waiting for an Echo is a riveting, rarely seen glimpse into American jails and prisons. It is also a damning account of policies that have criminalized mental illness, shifting large numbers of people who belong in therapeutic settings into punitive ones. Dr. Christine Montross has spent her career treating the most severely ill psychiatric patients. This expertise—the mind in crisis—has enabled her to reckon with the human stories behind mass incarceration. A father attempting to weigh the impossible calculus of a plea bargain. A bright young woman whose life is derailed by addiction. Boys in a juvenile detention facility who, desperate for human connection, invent a way to communicate with one another from cell to cell. Overextended doctors and correctional officers who strive to provide care and security in environments riddled with danger. Our methods of incarceration take away not only freedom but also selfhood and soundness of mind. In a nation where 95 percent of all inmates are released from prison and return to our communities, this is a practice that punishes us all.

Author : Richard Powers
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0063119447
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Prisoner's Dilemma written by Richard Powers and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The magnificent second novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory and the forthcoming Bewilderment. “Accomplished . . . mature and assured. . . . A major American novelist.”— New Republic Something is wrong with Eddie Hobson, Sr., father of four, sometime history teacher, quiz master, black humorist, and virtuoso invalid. His recurring fainting spells have worsened, and given his ingrained aversion to doctors, his worried family tries to discover the nature of his sickness. Meanwhile, in private, Eddie puts the finishing touches on a secret project he calls Hobbstown, a place that he promises will save him, the world, and everything that’s in it. A dazzling novel of compassion and imagination, Prisoner’s Dilemma is a story of the power of individual experience.

Author : Lorenzo Steele, Jr.
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781540459978
Total Pages : 98 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Behind These Prison Walls written by Lorenzo Steele, Jr. and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-02-04 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Behind These Prison Walls "Life Inside Rikers Island" gives a photographic journey into the nation's most violent adolescent jail on Rikers Island. Former New York City Corrections officer and visual artist gives viewers a first-hand account into the horrors and dangers officers and detainees were subjected to daily. Former New York City Corrections officer and visual artist Lorenzo Steele Jr. uses art as a medium to change habits and behaviors that can lead to criminal activity. Lorenzo served 12 years as an officer on Rikers Island (1987-1999) and his mission through the arts is to deter youth from making choices and decisions that can have a devastating effect on their lives. It's an educational book that's grade appropriate and can be used in public-schools, churches, colleges and art galleries.

Author : Heather Ann Thompson
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 1400078245
Total Pages : 754 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Blood in the Water written by Heather Ann Thompson and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The definitive history of the infamous 1971 Attica Prison uprising, the state's violent response, and the victim's decades-long quest for justice. • Thompson served as the Historical Consultant on the Academy Award-nominated documentary feature ATTICA “Gripping ... deals with racial conflict, mass incarceration, police brutality and dissembling politicians ... Makes us understand why this one group of prisoners [rebelled], and how many others shared the cost.” —The New York Times On September 9, 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners took over the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York to protest years of mistreatment. Holding guards and civilian employees hostage, the prisoners negotiated with officials for improved conditions during the four long days and nights that followed. On September 13, the state abruptly sent hundreds of heavily armed troopers and correction officers to retake the prison by force. Their gunfire killed thirty-nine men—hostages as well as prisoners—and severely wounded more than one hundred others. In the ensuing hours, weeks, and months, troopers and officers brutally retaliated against the prisoners. And, ultimately, New York State authorities prosecuted only the prisoners, never once bringing charges against the officials involved in the retaking and its aftermath and neglecting to provide support to the survivors and the families of the men who had been killed. Drawing from more than a decade of extensive research, historian Heather Ann Thompson sheds new light on every aspect of the uprising and its legacy, giving voice to all those who took part in this forty-five-year fight for justice: prisoners, former hostages, families of the victims, lawyers and judges, and state officials and members of law enforcement. Blood in the Water is the searing and indelible account of one of the most important civil rights stories of the last century. (With black-and-white photos throughout)

Author : Albert Woodfox
Publisher : Grove Press
ISBN 13 : 0802146902
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Solitary written by Albert Woodfox and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An uncommonly powerful memoir about four decades in confinement . . . A profound book about friendship [and] solitary confinement in the United States.” —New York Times Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award Solitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement—in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, twenty-three hours a day, in Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison—all for a crime he did not commit. That Albert Woodfox survived at all was a feat of extraordinary endurance. That he emerged whole from his odyssey within America’s prison and judicial systems is a triumph of the human spirit. While behind bars in his early twenties, Albert was inspired to join the Black Panther Party because of its social commitment and code of living. He was serving a fifty-year sentence in Angola for armed robbery when, on April 17, 1972, a white guard was killed. Albert and another member of the Panthers were accused of the crime and immediately put in solitary confinement. Without a shred of evidence against them, their trial was a sham of justice. Decades passed before Albert was finally released in February 2016. Sustained by the solidarity of two fellow Panthers, Albert turned his anger into activism and resistance. The Angola 3, as they became known, resolved never to be broken by the corruption that effectively held them for decades as political prisoners. Solitary is a clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the United States and around the world.