William S. Tregea - Böcker

Drawing on twenty-five years of teaching prison college and volunteer classes in eleven Michigan and California prisons, The Prisoners' World strives to make the "prisoners' voice" come alive for regular college students.The book starts off by tracing shifts in social definitions of criminality, and lays out the premises of the U.S. incarceration binge in the 1986 War on Drugs laws and subsequent mandatory sentencing and policing. Later chapters discuss issues such as leaving home, cell life, correctional officers and treatment, the homosexual prisoner, and drugs. Furthermore, the book discusses the teachers' experiences via author narrative essays that draw the reader into prisoner student and prisoner teacher interaction, and what it is like inside prison college classes where both young and older black prisoner students describe growing up in the inner cities. The book also draws upon over sixty prisoner essays that provide insight on prisoner life and self-concept with insights on pathways to prison, drug selling, the inner city and guns. There is also a strong focus on the "inside" experiences of entering prison and orientation, daily work routine, correctional officers and surreptitious activities like cell cooking and contraband. These essays are capped by prisoner critiques of prison life from those still in the system. The Prisoners' World serves as a successful supplemental book whose material has proven useful in undergraduate criminal justice classes. As college students themselves, on-campus students in these classes will identify with the prisoner-student voices who share their experiences but in a radically different environment.

Drawing on thirty years of prison college courses and volunteer classes in eleven Michigan and California prisons, Prisoners on Criminology: Convict Life Stories and Crime Prevention makes criminology theories come alive through the use of the prisoners’ voices.The book features policy background and textbook-like chapters that review major criminological theories and present prisoner essays that apply criminology insights to the prisoners’ lives. Each chapter has helpful exercises and discussion and review questions for classroom use.Introductory informational chapters present an historical review of how the United States came to have the world’s largest prison system. A chapter on prisoners’ educational background presents information from prisoner surveys and the author’s extensive background in postsecondary correctional education. Over eighty prisoner essays show how prisoners connect criminology theories to their lives growing up, with insights on individual, family, and community levels of crime causation. A chapter on social structure, social process and alternative criminologies is followed by additional information on in-prison criminological issues with several prisoner essays. The conclusion emphasizes the main argument of the book—that the jobless ghetto is a major reason for much of the criminality now in the large correctional apparatus of the United States.Prisoners on Criminology will be of great value to scholars and students interested in criminology, social deviance, sociology, urban studies, political science, anthropology, counseling, and social work.