The US prison industrial complex is in desperate need of repair. Corrections has become big business in America and a young, misguided generation is fueling a system built to fail. More and more kids are hitting the streets and lining up to go behind the razor wire. What is the solution? What if reformed felons could change the future of the next generation? Kit Cummings' bold vision-borne out of twelve years working with more than ten thousand offenders-flips the script on prison reform and disrupts the pipeline from schools to prisons. He replaces the current gang-inspired convict code with one that integrates respect, integrity, and dignity, giving prisoners the freedom to dream big dreams and become positive role models to a young generation at risk. Brothers who have been behind the wire share powerful lessons with our youth, redirecting their path and ending the violence in the streets and in their hearts. The proven success of Kit's Power of Peace Project lays the groundwork for a future with less violence, declining prison populations, and a more sound and just prison system.In 2010, Kit Cummings founded the Power of Peace Project. Using the experience he gained resolving conflict in some of the most dangerous areas in the world, he applies his principles to bring about change in prisons, schools, corporations, and the faith-based community. Kit has worked with the incarcerated in over a hundred prisons, jails, detention centers, and rehab facilities and served over ten thousand prisoners. The New Convict Code brings solutions to the growing epidemic of crime and violence we are witnessing among today's youth.

The author used qualitative data collected in 2005 and 2006 in California to explore how former inmates (men and women) understand and explain prison violence and inmate culture.--Chapter 1.

This text applied economic principles to the analysis of the prison economy, prison hustling and inmate careers in both men's and women's institutions. Prisons provide a basic subsistence for inmates, but deny them legitimate income-producing opportunities. Therefore, the study starts with the proposition that prisons are islands of poverty in which a high demand is created for goods and services such as coffee, food, drugs, weapons and sex, and goes on to examine the economic systems that develop. Three types of hustling are identified. The most elaborate is that of the entrepreneurial clique under the leadership of the antisocial 'right guy' who utilizes the techniques of ghetto hustling. He organizes his clique by using the methods and providing the services of a crime syndicate. The second system involves inmates who achieve sufficiently high levels of production to qualify as 'merchants'. They produce enough goods to become involved in reciprocal trade arrangements with other prisoners. In women's prisons, for social as well as economic reasons, inmates develop a 'family' system and lesbian butch/"femme" relations, with families supporting themselves through barter and theft.