" ... a psychologist's brilliant account of three years he spent in Leavenworth, studying the weird, pathetic, yet often hilarious quirks of the criminal mind"--Cover.

The United States accounts for 5 percent of the world's population, yet incarcerates about 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Examining a wealth of studies by researchers and correctional professionals, and the experience of educators, this book shows recidivism rates drop in direct correlation with the amount of education prisoners receive, and the rate drops dramatically with each additional level of education attained. Presenting a workable solution to America's mass incarceration and recidivism problems, this book demonstrates that great fiscal benefits arise when modest sums are spent educating prisoners. Educating prisoners brings a reduction in crime and social disruption, reduced domestic spending and a rise in quality of life. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still. The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison's sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone. A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.

CONVICT'S CANDY is based on a teen-aged, pre-op transsexual named Candy, who gets arrested and sent to federal prison exactly one week before her scheduled sex-change operation. Still having male organs, Candy is housed with strong, masculine, handsome male inmates who haven t been around or touched a woman in years. Candy soon finds herself being caught in several love affairs with men with families, girlfriends and wives at home waiting for them to be released. But Candy doesn t kiss and tell; she understands the code of silence: what happens in prison stays in prison... . CONVICT'S CANDY deals with sexual identity, prostitution and homosexuality within the prison system, the interactions and relationships between the inmates and officers, infidelity and most importantly, explains how the HIV virus spreads rampantly within the prison. It also reveals how the dangerous and deadly disease is transmitted within society, when infected inmates are released to go home."

Empire of Convicts focuses on male and female Indians incarcerated in Southeast Asia for criminal and political offenses committed in colonial South Asia. From the seventeenth century onward, penal transportation was a key strategy of British imperial rule, exemplified by deportations first to the Americas and later to Australia. Case studies from the insular prisons of Bengkulu, Penang, and Singapore illuminate another carceral regime in the Indian Ocean World that brought South Asia and Southeast Asia together through a global system of forced migration and coerced labor. A major contribution to histories of crime and punishment, prisons, law, labor, transportation, migration, colonialism, and the Indian Ocean World, Empire of Convicts narrates the experiences of Indian bandwars (convicts) and shows how they exercised agency in difficult situations, fashioning their own worlds and even becoming “their own warders.” Anand A. Yang brings long journeys across kala pani (black waters) to life in a deeply researched and engrossing account that moves fluidly between local and global contexts.

Based on the Liverpool Desistance Study, this book compares and contrasts the stories of ex-convicts who are actively involved in criminal behavior with those who are desisting from crime and drug use. Extensive excerpts from the study reveal two types of personal narratives: a "condemnation" script favored by active offenders and a "generative" script favored by desisters. The way that these scripts are constructed and the manner in which they are used is then examined in light of contemporary criminological and psychological thought. The results suggests that success in reform depends on providing rehabilitative opportunities that reinforce the generative script. This study reveals a constructive new direction for offender rehabilitation efforts and will appeal to a wide range of readers from psychologists and criminologists to legislators, administrators, substance abuse counselors, and offenders themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)