The second edition of A Country Called Prison discusses how mass incarceration has led to a population of individuals inside the United States who have become legal aliens in their own land, and addresses the consequences. Besides discussing the evolution of the problem, it poses practical solutions to correct the path on which this country is set.
To buy the "Big House Ballads," a little home made whiskey sippin´ music, please go to this link www.prisonpredatorsprey.com. Toby Jacks is no stranger to crime. To the prison officials, he's just another inmate doing time. Before his conviction for auto theft, however, Jacks skillfully plotted a series of murders in Olympia. The reporters tagged him the Capital Killer. Though the murders remain unsolved, captivity has not diminished Toby Jacks pathological predatory urges. Every day the prison guards monitor his behavior along with that of the other inmates at Stafford Creek Correctional Center, unaware that Jacks is the serial killer. As his old night-stalking song echoes in his mind, Jacks watches and waits for his next victim. This time his prey is one among the prison staff. Every contact with an inmate has as much potential to be peaceful as it has to result in a violent outbreak. As guards understand, the job is more than mechanics, more than brute force. They can play a large part in directing a peaceful outcome. The characters in the book are alive and rich with life experience. Some of their finest contributions to corrections come from their backgrounds as well as from their solid gut instinct. Will Morris has what his father calls "that Injun blood." After years of working as a faller in the timber industry, Will came to Stafford Creek to work as a guard. Will's gut instinct tells him Toby Jacks is up to no good. Harry Holiday, Perry Thimble, Max Dillenger, and Elsie Pratt are what the new-to-corrections staff calls the "tower gods." They are people who have walked the bricks for years, having experienced the turbulent times of the 60's and 70's. Times change. People can change too. Instrumental in the change of prison operation are fellow "old-schoolers" Buck Campbell, a sergeant at Stafford Creek, and his life long friend/rival Charley Gould, who has worked his way up the chain to his present position as associate superintendent of Washington State Corrections. Buck and Charley both lived through the violence of the past and unwittingly fulfilled the words spoken to them as young guards in Walla-Walla from a simple-minded yet intuitively brilliant black inmate, Luther Patch: "That be your sign, Charley Gould, when you see the blood of the vine on the walls of Walla-Walla then you time be at hand. Just rides the tide, Charley Gould, tide in, tide out. You be pouring the new wine into new wine skins, praise be to the sweet Jesus, he be putting his finger on you and teach you as you ride that tide in and the tide out. But when you see them pour that new wine into those old wine skins, you just hold your peace, say nothing! Because it be the Lord's doin, they be a-teachin you, you hold your peace until the blood of the vine be on the walls at Walla-Walla, that be your time." Buck Campbell, sweet Jesus be havin purpose and meaning to you too. Charley be the heart of the sweet Jesus but you be the spirit, yes sir, you be the spirit speakin´ the truth and pissin em off. You be growin into a son-of-a-bitch, Buck Campbell, but you be God's son-of-a-bitch, speakin´ the truth and pissin em off." Charley, Buck, and the tower gods do bring that new wine to the new prison and its staff. Prison is a spiritual place; a place Harry Holiday calls the Holy Darkness. In this place of incarceration, spiritual receptivity can be honed, becoming a valuable tool in dealing with the dark natures of inmates like Toby Jacks. Some correctional officers learn the mechanics of the job and do well in the correctional world under normal circumstances. But with Toby Jacks and his kind, only those who have honed their intuitive abilities can match up to him and his devious schemes. Jacks has his own spiritual receptivity, however, as he listens to a voice that speaks to him from the depths of a deep dark for
An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still. The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison's sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone. A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.
New York Times bestselling author of Labor Day With a New Preface When it was first published in 1998, At Home in the World set off a furor in the literary world and beyond. Joyce Maynard's memoir broke a silence concerning her relationship—at age eighteen—with J.D. Salinger, the famously reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye, then age fifty-three, who had read a story she wrote for The New York Times in her freshman year of college and sent her a letter that changed her life. Reviewers called her book "shameless" and "powerful" and its author was simultaneously reviled and cheered. With what some have viewed as shocking honesty, Maynard explores her coming of age in an alcoholic family, her mother's dream to mold her into a writer, her self-imposed exile from the world of her peers when she left Yale to live with Salinger, and her struggle to reclaim her sense of self in the crushing aftermath of his dismissal of her not long after her nineteenth birthday. A quarter of a century later—having become a writer, survived the end of her marriage and the deaths of her parents, and with an eighteen-year-old daughter of her own—Maynard pays a visit to the man who broke her heart. The story she tells—of the girl she was and the woman she became—is at once devastating, inspiring, and triumphant.
Humans, being visually oriented, are well versed in camouflage and how animals hide from predators that use vision to locate prey. However, many predators do not hunt by sight; they hunt by scent. This raises the question: do survival mechanisms and behaviors exist which allow animals to hide from these olfactory predators? If so, what are they, a
The red-haired emerald-green eyed Irish American is waiting to die on a mountain-top… under a starlit sky in front of a blazing fire, surrounded by his three imaginary friends: the moth, the chameleon, and the eagle. As he phlegmatically looks back at the adventurous, globe-trotting life he has led, his diary entries, which he had penned during the course of his journey, take us through the important milestones in his life. What could have possibly led him to where he is now? Why is he contemplating suicide? Will he take the final plunge? Predator & Prey looks at life as Yin & Yang. It artistically and philosophically explores psychology, humanity, God, and ultimately, space, time, and the universe, with the aim of making sense of what we call life.
Prison Rap: Stories from the Inside, is an accumulated literary forum by one prisoner incarcerated in the Florida Department of Corrections began with the author reaching out to numerous community-based newspapers in hopes of being given an opportunity to express his views and share his personal experiences in life as well as what he has observed and lived through in twenty years in prison. Out of all the query cover letters that were sent to editors across the country, the idea of adding a Prison Rap column drew the attention of only one newspaper –The Miami Times, which ran weekly in the author’s own hometown. Stopping the press to make room for a serious weekly discussion about the life of a prisoner, had proven to be a successful move as made evident by the positive feedback in letters submitted to D. Kevin McNeir, Senior Editor at the Miami Times. While prison life has always in some way been at the core of every Prison Rap discussion, with each passing week, the many topics raised had naturally began to run wild—ranging from events occurring in prison to events occurring in the free world: from learning how to forgive to being thankful for small blessings, from sharing personal moments of the past to reports about the interesting lives of fellow convicts, from engaging in spiritual conversations to motivational pep talks, from expressing the love for a mother to being equally appreciative of a grandmother, from nostalgic love to romantic relationships involving prisoners and individuals in the free world, from health issues to preparing for life after death, from life tragedies to weathering troublesome times, from believing that dreams can come true to achieving success in spite of being designated the underdog by others. As the author continues to write a weekly column for The Miami Times, his well of multiples topics have certainly not run dry. At some point, though, the thought of putting a collection of his most well-received work into a book from had crossed his mind. Over time, what began as a bright idea had become a passionate dream eventually brought to life. In all, 72 heartfelt weekly writings made the drafts, and at least two selected writings are follow-ups to others previously ran in the paper. Chiming in briefly at the beginning and the conclusion of the book are wise sayings and encouraging excerpts from several previously ran columns. Included in the book are wise sayings, encouraging excerpts from movies, and a few of well- known people. One unequivocal fact about Prison Rap is that it is heavily laced with love, motivation, hope for tomorrow, survival, resilience, information about prison and sharing with an overall concept of leading life to improvement whether one is in prison or in the free world. Amassing great riches has never been the primary goal of the author presenting his collection of writings to the world. More important to him is succeeding at conveying to his readers the personal sentiments and in-depth feelings of a man held captive away from society while demonstrating that the heart and mind of a prisoner is indeed capable of functioning humanely despite poor decisions made in the past. Whether one can find pleasure in reading any part of the book is something readers must determine for themselves. What the author can guarantee, though, is that an honest illustration of a prisoner’s life will be offered in the book, which he hopes will become etched in the hearts of every soul that judges it.
