A fascinating memoir from the wife of a prisoner and how her family survived outside the prison wire. Riveting from start to finish... the incredible story of how a woman and her family survived poverty and injustices, and yet received miraculous provision. How did a woman who suffered such trauma go on to change the face of the justice system in New Zealand and the world? Verna's and her children's lives changed forever when police knocked on her door one evening and her husband was arrested for a kidnapping, then tried and sentenced to eleven years in jail. While visiting various prisons over the next few years, Verna soon realised that not only were the prisoners serving a sentence, but the families were also serving their own invisible sentences outside the prison wire... "... a story of institutional maltreatment, of bureaucratic indifference, of the traumatisation and bullying of her children, of individual acts of cruelty and generosity, of hardship, of the value of collective strength and support-and of resilience and faithfulness in the face of adversity." -Sir Kim Workman KNZM, QSO

AN INVISIBLE PRISON A true story of survival Alcoholism, drugs, and biker gangs are not what one would expect to find in the background of a person destined to become an internationally known motivational speaker. Yet in her starkly honest autobiography, Susan Armstrong reveals many long-hidden secrets from her past and shares her last-chance struggle for recovery. It's hard to imagine being so addicted to substances, and so bereft of self-esteem that living in a gang with a dysfunctional and abusive partner becomes an acceptable lifestyle. Only someone who has been there and has since reclaimed her life can share her perilous experiences with authentic memory. This riveting story, told in vivid and often disturbing detail, will leave readers with a new understanding of the compelling human need to seek approval. Simply to have survived a life as self-destructive as the one Susan describes would make a remarkable story in itself. That she has gone on to build an enviable record of success as a corporate trainer with a long list of Fortune 100 clients makes this a truly inspirational tale. Her story offers hope to countless others who may feel their lives are without worth or promise.

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, perhaps better termed Toxically Induced Lack of Tolerance, can be a devastating condition that leads to economic hardship and isolation, not only from the outside world but from friends and family. The wide range of symptoms and the differences between sufferers make it an enigmatic condition to patient and physician alike. Like Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) once was, it is not always accepted as a physical illness. The aim of this book is to inform and help sufferers and create awareness in those around them. It is also hoped that it will achieve recognition of the condition among health professionals. The book is split into four sections: a description of the condition, a commentary on environmental chemicals past and present, accounts of experiences from those effected and a large advice section on how best to live with the condition and minimise toxic encounters. Within the book, there is an ample glossary, lists of further reading suggestions and useful addresses and an exhaustive index to aid ease of access to specifics and for cross-referencing. Spaces are provided between subjects for the addition of notes, comments and further information as it becomes available. The writer, Evelyn Todd, was first affected by chemical sensitivity at the age of eleven but was not diagnosed until this century. During later years, she has made a study of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and this book is of the fruits of this and her own experience. Apart from sufferers and their families, The Invisible Prison should be read by those who have dealings with the general public, particularly all who work in health care in any capacity.

From the early 1970s the Irish midland town of Portlaoise became famous as the home of the country's maximum security political prison. A childhood on the Main Street of that "once congested, now double by-passed town" afforded award-winning poet Pat Boran a unique insight into its workings, and into small-town life in general. Here are extraordinary glimpses of bog men and bogey men, of the town's first colour television and the national debate over its first public toilet ... Here too are stories of coming of age, of high jinks and low deeds, of events and characters both wonderful and strange. And here too is the shadow of the northern 'troubles', seen through the lens of a southern Irish town with claims to being the place where the British Empire began - and where the first shots of the 1916 Rising were fired. Part memoir, part social history, part meditation on community itself, The Invisible Prison is a funny, moving and by time heart-breaking exploration of Irish life and the energies and passions that animate it.

For African American men without a high school diploma, being in prison or jail is more common than being employed—a sobering reality that calls into question post-Civil Rights era social gains. Nearly 70 percent of young black men will be imprisoned at some point in their lives, and poor black men with low levels of education make up a disproportionate share of incarcerated Americans. In Invisible Men, sociologist Becky Pettit demonstrates another vexing fact of mass incarceration: most national surveys do not account for prison inmates, a fact that results in a misrepresentation of U.S. political, economic, and social conditions in general and black progress in particular. Invisible Men provides an eye-opening examination of how mass incarceration has concealed decades of racial inequality. Pettit marshals a wealth of evidence correlating the explosion in prison growth with the disappearance of millions of black men into the American penal system. She shows that, because prison inmates are not included in most survey data, statistics that seemed to indicate a narrowing black-white racial gap—on educational attainment, work force participation, and earnings—instead fail to capture persistent racial, economic, and social disadvantage among African Americans. Federal statistical agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, collect surprisingly little information about the incarcerated, and inmates are not included in household samples in national surveys. As a result, these men are invisible to most mainstream social institutions, lawmakers, and nearly all social science research that isn't directly related to crime or criminal justice. Since merely being counted poses such a challenge, inmates' lives—including their family background, the communities they come from, or what happens to them after incarceration—are even more rarely examined. And since correctional budgets provide primarily for housing and monitoring inmates, with little left over for job training or rehabilitation, a large population of young men are not only invisible to society while in prison but also ill-equipped to participate upon release. Invisible Men provides a vital reality check for social researchers, lawmakers, and anyone who cares about racial equality. The book shows that more than a half century after the first civil rights legislation, the dismal fact of mass incarceration inflicts widespread and enduring damage by undermining the fair allocation of public resources and political representation, by depriving the children of inmates of their parents' economic and emotional participation, and, ultimately, by concealing African American disadvantage from public view.

In a book that is accessible to general readers and professionals alike, Angela Devlin has vividly recreated the realities of prison life for women at the end of the twentieth century. She describes the cavalier way in which women can be treated; the lack of provision for many basic needs; the over crowding; the liberal use of medication as a means of control; the violence which stems from drug misuse; the plight of black and ethnic minority women and foreign nationals; and the self-mutilation and suicide attempts of women in desperate need of help. Invisible Women 'lifts the lid' on women's prisons. It is a book that will shock as well as inform.

In a series of newly commissioned essays from the leading scholars and advocates in criminal justice, Invisible Punishment explores, for the first time, the far-reaching consequences of our current criminal justice policies. Adopted as part of “get tough on crime” attitudes that prevailed in the 1980s and '90s, a range of strategies, from “three strikes” and “a war on drugs,” to mandatory sentencing and prison privatization, have resulted in the mass incarceration of American citizens, and have had enormous effects not just on wrong-doers, but on their families and the communities they come from. This book looks at the consequences of these policies twenty years later.