NCJ Number
182083
Date Published
2000
Length
224 pages
Annotation
This volume presents a philosophy professor’s analyses of issues related to crime and offenders, together with dialogues that explore inmate attitudes toward issues explored by contemporary philosophers and the relationship of these writings to their lives, crimes, imprisonment, values, and other issues.
Abstract
The volume was developed from the discussions held in philosophy classes conducted by the principal author, a college professor, at the Maryland Penitentiary in Baltimore. The class participants were 14 inmates who were serving lengthy or life sentences and became the book’s co-authors. The philosophers whose writings they considered included Weil, Nietzsche, Foucault, Bollnow, Heidegger, Minkowski, West, Campbell, Moore, Buber, and Malcolm X. The class discussions focused on issues of power, force, victims, victimizers, inmate-staff relations, prison conditions, space, doing time, sex, race relations, violence, guns, leaving prison, and other issues. The professor also explains how he came to teach in prison and the ways in which he surmounted the physical, psychic, bureaucratic, and other barriers related to his becoming a volunteer instructor at the penitentiary. Photographs and biographies of the inmate co-authors, index, and 15 references