NCJ Number
180468
Editor(s)
Robert Johnson,
Hans Toch
Date Published
2000
Length
266 pages
Annotation
This is a collection of essays written by men and women prisoners, describing their personal experiences and reflections on crime and punishment.
Abstract
The essays are presented in the categories of Crime, Rehabilitation, Finding Faith, Being Imprisoned, Living in Prison and Justice and Injustice. The selections describe such activities as: the daily routine of a middle-level drug dealer; the lure of drugs and the drug culture and the entire process associated with drug use; the violence of life on the street; the life of a sex addict and his abusive relationship with his stepdaughter; the cycle of violence and victimization that links victims and victimizers; race relations inside prisons; one inmate’s thoughts on why black men are murdering one another without compassion or remorse; self-discovery behind bars and reform aided by fellow prisoners; the emotional pain of imprisonment for the offender and those who love him; the story of a vulnerable small-town boy whose life went awry after a traumatic experience in Vietnam and for whom healing comes, slowly and painfully, in a prison cell; and lessons in good thinking and personal responsibility learned after years of bad thinking and irresponsibility, the transformation of a man from a self-defined victim of an unjust world to an autonomous actor responsible for his own destiny.