Category: The Prison System
Punishment has shifted from the prisoner?s body to his/her soul.
(see also Racism/Colonial Control/Prisons)
This book connects the over-reliance on incarceration, the routinization of capital punishment, the “penal mesh” throughout society, with the market polices and neoconservativism that dominate the US and UK.
Gordon ran intensive writing workshops in Washington State Prisons for nine years. He uses this book to explore the prison experience from both inside and outside of prison.
Hallinan looks at prisons that were built “not because it was needed but because it was wanted-by politicians who thought it would bring them votes, by voters who hoped it would bring them jobs, and by a corrections establishment that no longer believed in correction.” He addresses the prison boom: facilities quickly built for economic reasons, resulting in poor prison conditions and a system so lucrative that its founders have become rich. The author also looks at the stories of current wardens, guards, inmates and townspeople living in the shadow of a prison.