In this Book
- Fourth City: Essays from the Prison in America
- Book
- 2014
- Published by: Michigan State University Press
summary
At 2.26 million, incarcerated Americans not only outnumber the nation’s fourth-largest city, they make up a national constituency bound by a shared condition. Fourth City: Essays from the Prison in America presents more than seventy essays from twenty-seven states, written by incarcerated Americans chronicling their experience inside. In essays as moving as they are eloquent, the authors speak out against a national prison complex that fails so badly at the task of rehabilitation that 60% of the 650,000 Americans released each year return to prison. These essays document the authors’ efforts at self-help, the institutional resistance such efforts meet at nearly every turn, and the impact, in money and lives, that this resistance has on the public. Directly confronting the images of prisons and prisoners manufactured by popular media, so-called reality TV, and for-profit local and national news sources, Fourth City recognizes American prisoners as our primary, frontline witnesses to the dysfunction of the largest prison system on earth. Filled with deeply personal stories of coping, survival, resistance, and transformation, Fourth City should be read by every American who believes that law should achieve order in the cause of justice rather than at its cost.
Table of Contents
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- Title Page, Copyright Page
- pp. i-vi
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xi-xii
- Part One. Life on the Streets of Prison City
- Ticket In: The Shaping of a Convict
- pp. 54-58
- Coping with Life in Prison City
- pp. 59-85
- Ticket In: Lessons in Stupidity
- pp. 86-89
- Seeking Peace in Prison City
- pp. 90-108
- Family Life In and From Prison City
- pp. 112-137
- Part Two. The Rules of Law, Policy, and Practice in Prison City
- Inside Justice and Injustice
- pp. 145-175
- Kite Out: Fifteen Years since Inception
- pp. 176-178
- Civic Dysfunction and Its Critics
- pp. 179-216
- Kite Out: Visions of the Night
- pp. 217-220
- Mental and Physical Health Care
- pp. 221-234
- Community Activists
- pp. 238-254
- Kite Out: Life on the Inside
- pp. 255-256
- Prison and Reentry Programs
- pp. 257-280
- Editor’s Afterword
- pp. 295-298
- Further Reading
- pp. 311-314
- Notes on Contributors
- pp. 315-322
Additional Information
ISBN
9781609173975
Related ISBN(s)
9781611861075, 9781628950199, 9781628960198
MARC Record
OCLC
879306260
Pages
352
Launched on MUSE
2014-05-06
Language
English
Open Access
No