Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America's Prisons

Description

Gates of Injustice is a compelling exposé of the U.S. prison system: it tells how more than 2 million Americans came to be incarcerated … what it's really like on the inside … and how a giant "prison-industrial complex" promotes imprisonment over other solutions.

Alan Elsner paints a terrifying picture of how our prisons really work. You'll hear how race-based gangs control institutions and prey on the weak–and how a rape epidemic has swept the U.S. prison system. You'll discover the plight of 300,000 mentally ill prisoners, many abandoned to suffer with grossly inadequate medical care.

Elsner takes you inside "supermax" prisons that deny inmates human contact and reveals official corruption and brutality within U.S. jails. You'll also learn how prisons help to spread infectious diseases throughout society … one of the ways the prison crisis touches you, even if you've never had a brush with the law.

• 2 million prisoners: how it happened and why. Why the United States locks away 6-10 times more people than other Western societies.
• The other victims. What it's like for convicts' families left on the outside.
• No place for the sick or weak. Prison medical care: varying from substandard to shocking.
• Life after prison: the realities of parole. What's supposed to happen … and what really happens.
• The "prison-industrial" complex: The hidden politics of imprisonment.

Sample Content

Table of Contents

Preface.


Acknowledgments.


 1. The Second Toughest Sheriff in America.


 2. Becoming a Prison Nation.


 3. Entering the Gates.


 4. The Vulnerable.


 5. The Sanity of the System.


 6. An Unhealthy Situation.


 7. Women Behind Bars.


 8. Supermax.


 9. Short-Term Problems.


10. Money, Money, Money.


11. After Prison.


12. Some Modest Suggestions.


Endnotes.


Index.

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