Fourth City: Essays from the Prison in America (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781611861075)

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.

Author: Doran Larson
ISBN-10: 1611861071
ISBN-13: 9781611861075
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Language: English
Published: 02/01/2014
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 9.90h x 7.00w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 11/18/2013
Library Journal 12/01/2013 pg. 112