10 Books About (and From) Prison

While the fact of prisons simmers behind innumerable news stories – from the West Memphis 3 to the Lockerbie bomber to the Miami football scandal -- the enormity of the system remains weirdly invisible. Prison is framed as a sort of conclusion; it’s where the bad guys go before vanishing into the ether and allowing our attention to move onto the next story. But more than two million lives are lived in U.S. prisons these days. And not only is the day-to-day reality of that worthy of more attention, but so are the consequences of our economic and political dependence on a punitive system that incarcerates 25 percent of the entire world’s inmates. Five percent of the world population is locked up in U.S. prisons. Both inside and outside the walls, much is stake.

Here are ten of the best books – contemporary and classic, fiction and nonfiction – about prisons. They are listed in no particular order, as all of them deserve your attention. Because incarceration isn’t an end to our stories: it’s just another beginning.

I wrote an article for AlterNet on some of most interesting, astonishing, moving, and provoking books written about, and from, prisons. These titles span more than a century, and hinge on stories, confessions, spirituality, analysis, philosophy, and "literary investigation". I even snuck in a must-read list of fifteen additional titles at the end. This is really good stuff, people.

Comments

[Michelle Aldrich]

You should add this book to your list....just published..."A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America" by Ernest Drucker published by the New Press....ISBN: 978-1-59558-497-7

[Anna Clark]

That looks really interesting ... thank you, Michelle!

[Dan Cohen]

From "I Carry Your Heart in My Heart: Family Constellations in Prison" by Dan Booth Cohen.

No one expected that Family Constellations with lifers in a Massachusetts state prison would transform the meeting room into what one volunteer calls, “The most sacred space I know.” These prisoners are serving long-term sentences for violent crimes, most life-without-the-possibility-of-parole for 1st degree murder. The men have been inside for decades and few have good prospects for being released. They represent society’s ultimate outcasts. Sentenced to die imprisoned, they personify evil brought to justice.

Ironically, to be in their presence is to be touched by grace. Volunteers come for the first time unsure of what to expect. Perhaps we want to offer help and comfort. By the end of the afternoon we realize instead it has been our “great privilege to be in the company of people who had gone through an ordeal that we can only imagine and had worked to find a way to their souls.”

Again and again the Constellation process reveals unexpected connections across space and time: the love between children and parents endures, literally piercing brick walls and razor wire enclosures; murder inexorably bonds the fate of the victim to the fate of the killer; lovers can touch each other, even after one of them dies.

The poet e. e. cummings described these eternal truths:
here is the deepest secret nobody knows…
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

In our hearts we carry the hearts of those who gave us life, those who gave us love, and those victims or perpetrators whose fate is entangled with ours. There is tender love and blessing in those hearts, but suffering and grief as well.

Those captive hearts retain ancestral memories of the orphan’s grief, the exile’s lament, the soldier’s guilt, the widow’s anguish, the slave’s humiliation, the mother’s anxiety, the father’s emptiness, the child’s loneliness. These hearts can be murderous, the heart of a rapist or the heart of a saint.

http://www.amazon.com/Carry-Heart-Family-Constellations-Prison/dp/3896706314/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244128558&sr=1-1

[Displaced Person]

You omitted 'Texas Tough' The Rise of America's Prison Empire by Robert Perkinson. It is a must read.

[Anna Clark]

so many more books to get to!

[Conor]

here's one from Texas
Messages of Life from Death Row

http://www.amazon.com/Messages-Life-Death-Pierre-Pradervand/dp/1439235600/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315364003&sr=1-3

[Christian Noll]

How does a state like VERMONT which brought us Civil Unions, Senator Bernie Sanders and Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, manage to rank 49th in the nation for govermental integrity?

According to the Better Government Association in 2011 Vermont scored a flat zero in both Conflict of Interest Policy and Whistle Blower Protections dragging its overall score down to 49th IN THE NATION.

Vermont also has the highest Police Misconduct rate IN THE NATION per capita of police officers. That's IN THE NATION.

With a police misconduct rate three and a half times the national average, I decided to take a closer look.

You should add it to your list:
http://www.amazon.com/Vermont-C-Truth-Attrition/dp/0615267548/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309576797&sr=1-1

PRESS RELEASE
http://vtdigger.org/2011/09/06/noll-self-publishes-book-about-vermont-prisons/

I wish Anna Leigh Clark would consider reviewing it.

Christian Noll
BS/MS criminal justice
author/publisher