An overview of Books on Prisons
Prisons and Prison Life: Costs and Consequences
Author Joycelyn M. Pollock
Publisher Oxford University Press
Length 306 pages
Year 2003
The book describes and analyses prisons and costs of imprisonment for all involved. The book shares a short history of imprisonment in the U.S., the book also covers all the aspects of prisons, including Profiles Prisoners, a description of Life in Prison, Women’s Prisons, Correctional Officers, Management Issues and Re-Entry. The book also covers topical issues such as Private Prisons, Super Max Prisons and AIDS in Prisons. The author devoted an entire chapter on Drug Wars and how it contributed to the explosive growth in prisons. The book is a whole package of definitions, meanings and contrast of different things with respect to the Prisons.
Reform and Regret: The Story of Federal Judicial Involvement in the Alabama Prison System
Author
Publisher
Length
Year
Larry W. Yackle
Oxford University Press
322 Pages
1989
The book captures the entire episode of Alabama Prison in 1975. When the deplorable conditions in Alabama’s prison revealed at trial in 1975. Judge Frank Johnson declared the prison system as a whole to constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the eighth amendment. He then issued an elaborate decree specifying improvements that must be made to satisfy constitutional standards. The author describes the campaign to achieve prison reform in Alabama through constitutional litigation and surveys the process that produced Johnson’s decree. It also highlights subsequent efforts to enforce his order in the face of bureaucratic inertia, administrative incompetence, and political demagogy.
Reform in the Making: The Implementation of Social Policy in Prison
Author
Publisher
Length
Year
Ann Chih Lin
Princeton University Press
232 Pages
2002
The book is based on extensive observations and over 350 interviews with staff and prisoners in five male prisons. Interviews about successfully implemented, subverted, abandoned or neglected Rehabilitation Program for the prisoners Most of them eventually return to society with a high chance of becoming repeat offenders. In order to avoid their regular visits to the prison there is a need of rehabilitation programs and this is the core objective of the book. The book revolves around all the rehabilitation programmes and explains why were they successful and useful or why did they failed.
Indian Prison Laws and Correction of Prisoners
Author
Publisher
Length
Year
Nitai Roy Chowdhury
Deep & Deep Publications
468 Pages
2002
The book, Indian Prison Laws and Correction of Prisoners summarizes the laws in Indian prisons and correction of prisoners. The book also explains the reformation of prisoners in historical perspective and also the scope of reformation of prisoners in existing prison laws. The book also reveals that there are clear indications of progressive developments in the jails and that the prison management must be based on a basic appreciation of the ways and means by which prisoners as individual human beings can be helped to improve their skills, habits, attitudes and approaches towards life. The book would serve as an important resource material for prison functionaries, teachers, researchers and students of criminology, sociology, social work and law.
Prison writing in 20th century America
Author
Publisher
Length
Year
H. Bruce Franklin (Editor), Tom Wicker (Foreword)
Penguin Books
384 Pages
1998
Prison writing in 20th century America depicts the history of the modern American Prison. It offers a harrowing vision of prison life in America today. In this book, H. Bruce Franklin, who is a leading authority of American prison writing, collected more than sixty selections from the most powerful prison writings that includes memoirs, stories, novels, and poems written in the last hundred years.
Prisons for Profit
Author
Publisher
Length
Year
ANTWAN ‘ANT ‘ BANK
VIP INK Publishing Group
114 Pages
2016
According to the author: ‘Billions of tax dollars are shelled out every year on food stamps, welfare, housing and many other Government assistant programs. The local education system as well as the local economy just simply can-not or will not support its people, so other measures need to be put in place! Many people will turn to the drug trade; some will become thieves, prostitutes, pimps, killers and drug attics. The harsh reality of your family starving with-out lights or water will make any sane person do what they need to in order to survive. In the culmination of it all, I can assure you that no matter what the decision; someone will be profiting from these inequalities and in that majority will be the private prisons of America. A collective of legal Corporations who soul survival is to put warm bodies in cold cells to meet a Government contracted quota. Because of this need, Government has no incentive to help these low income communities but to watch them falter instead; it’s actually cheaper for them to pay Private Prisons than to invest in these communities.’
Roads to Freedom
Author
Publisher
Length
Year
Mushirul Hasan
Oxford University Press.
288 Pages
2016
The book talks about the experience of political prisoners and their struggles against the backdrop of the freedom movement. We get a glimpse of the lives of Mohamed Ali, Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, the Nehru family, and Gandhi, to communists like M.N. Roy within the confines of the prison in a narrative that is at times deeply personal and yet political. The struggles of some remarkable women of the time are also written in the book be it doctor Rashid Jahan, Aruna Ali, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, or Sarojini Naidu. At that time, the instrument for dealing with resistance was the prison in British India. The book also shows the differences between Indian and European prisons during the colonial period and the conception of ‘criminal classes’ in the colony.
Shadow in Cages
Author
Publisher
Length
Year
Ruzbeh N. Bharucha
Diamond Pocket Books (P) Ltd
256 Pages
2004
Shadows in Cages, is a book on mother and child living in Indian Prisons. It throws light, on the emotional aspect, where mother and child, in Indian Prisons are concerned. The book reveals the prison conditions, insecurities, trials, joys, hopes and dreams that women inmates feel and share with their children. It reveals the prison conditions in India for women inmates and their children and explores the obstacles they must overcome. It’s the story of the pain and anguish that mother and child suffer in Indian prisons.
Prison on Wheels
Author
Publisher
Length
Eva Langley-Dános
Daimon
124 Pages
Eva Langley-Dános was born in Budapest, Hungary, and studied and taught there, earning a Ph.D. in economics in 1943. When the Nazis arrived, she went underground, but later, she and some of the other Jewish women were captured and deported to Germany by the Nazis, and her diaries of this horrible experience comprise Prison on Wheels. Prison on Wheels is a remarkable diary kept by Eva Dános, during sixteen horror-filled days and nights of deportation by the Nazis in 1945. It is an eyewitness report of a 700-kilometer rail journey from Ravensbrück, to Burgau, near Munich, one of the countless such operations that took place within Nazi Germany’s vast network of concentration camps.
Colours of the Cage
Author
Publisher
Year
Length
Arun Ferreira
Rupa Publication India
2014
176 Pages
Colours of the Cage: A prison Memoir tells the story of Arun Ferreira who is a social activist. The book depicts his life in an Indian prison and shows how ending imprisonment is necessary to achieve a democratic society. Arun Ferreira was constantly tortured and abused in the prison. He also describes the beatings, corruption, codes of behaviour among inmates, feeling of hopelessness, and the reason that kept him alive. He also mentions how other inmates are also facing such situations around the world.
Orange Is the New Black
Author
Publisher
Length
Piper Kerman
Spiegel & Grau, 2011
327 pages
A 2010 memoir by Piper Kerman, explains the events which occur as a result of her involvement with Nora Jansen (Catherine Cleary Wolters in real life), a former friend, lover and drug smuggler. In 1993, shortly after her graduation from Smith College, Kerman agreed to accompany Jansen on several trips to Asia and Europe, going as far as carrying a suitcase of laundered money across the Atlantic Ocean. In May 1998, Kerman was visited by two Customs agents and six years later she was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison. She served time in three different facilities (FCI Danbury, FTC Oklahoma City, and MCC Chicago). She was convicted for a ten-year old crime, and her modern, promising life barely resembled the misdeeds in her past. The 18 chapters highlight the codes of behavior and arbitrary hierarchies within the American criminal justice system and prisons. The book was adapted into a Netflix original comedy-drama series for 7 seasons by Jenji Kohan.
Australia's Hardest Prison
Author
Publisher
Length
James Phelps
Random House Australia, 2016
336 pages
James Phelps delves into the dark history of Australia’s hardest prison – Long Bay. Originally opened in 1909 as a women’s reformatory, it now holds the reputation of guarding the most dangerous outlaws from all over the continent. The book covers anecdotes, stories and experiences of innumerable prison guards, officers and inmates who once set foot in this correctional facility. There are 18 chapters in the book that explore murder, shootings, escapes, riots, rape, recreation, etc. within the jail. It includes accounts of Neddy Smith, Rene Rivkin. Rodney Adler, Graham “Abo” Henry, Tom Domican, John Elias, Ian Hall Saxon and many more.
American Prison
Author
Publisher
Length
It is a book by Shaun Bauer scrutinizing the interlinked dynamics of profit, slavery, captivity and mass incarceration in the private jails of America. 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 worked in there as an undercover corrections officer for four months. The prison was owned by Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic). His experiences were initially chronicled in a 2016 Mother Jones article, which went on to become the most-read feature in the history of the magazine. The 28 chapters of the book question the powerful forces that keep the private prison deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. The book was felicitated with J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize (2019), Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism (2019) and Robert F. Kennedy Book Award (2019).
Everyday Life in a Prison: Confinement, Surveillance, Resistance
Author
Publisher
Length
Mahuya Bandyopadhyay
Orient BlackSwan, 2010
332 pages
Everyday Life in a Prison by Mahuya Bandyopadhyay presents an anthropological description of how prisoners make sense of their lives by examining their interaction within everyday life, as well as the ordained goals of prison reforms in India. It is based on fieldwork done in an Alipore Jail, a central prison in Kolkata, India in the late 1990s. The book progressively aims to challenge the notion of the image of the prison as ‘fixed’ and ‘rule bound’. The author’s negotiations, encounters, interactions and friendships with inmates strive to offer an alternative world of freedom, hope and meaning in prison life.
The Jail Notebook and Other Writings
Author
Publisher
Length
Shahid Bhagat Singh
Leftwords book 2007
199 Pages
The Jail Note book of Shahid Bhagat Singh is a diary that was written by Bhagat Singh during his imprisonment. This diary was then handed over to his younger brother Kulbeer Singh just after his martyrdom and its with his family since then. A copy of the same available at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. It was first published in Hindi in early 1990s and then in Punjabi at the same time.
The notebook mostly consists of quotations from the books read by him during his captivity. The notebook contains, quotes and poetry from Punjabi and Hindi literature, his idea of Political thoughts like Anarchism and Marxism and many other rampant issues. This gives a sense of idea to the readers about his thought process and the issues that interested him. He has also written about religion and ethics in the notebook.
This notebook shows the intellectual journey of Bhagat Singh from being a mere revolutionary nationalist to a communist.
References:
1) NY Times
2) revolutionarydemocracy.com
3) Hindustan Times
Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison
Author
Publisher
Year
Jigna Vora
Penguin Random House India Private Limited
2019
The book ‘Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison’ is a memoir by journalist Jigna Vora. In 2011, crime journalist Jyotirmoy Dey was murdered by the members of gangster Chhota Rajan’s gang. A few months later Jigna Vora, who was also a crime reporter, was arrested in connection with the murder. She was accused of instigating Chotta Rajan to murder her colleague. Even though she had a lot of trouble adjusting to the prison facilities, she says “prison became my safe place. I couldn’t wait to return to it after hearings.” In 2017, after 7 years of imprisonment, she was acquitted of all charges.
The book by Jigna Vora talks about her life in prison. It also includes her years as a crime reporter, how she got involved in the case, court hearings, what it takes to survive in jails and the plight of female prisoners in Byculla jail. The book was launched by Sriram Raghavan and talking about the book he said, “there’s a lot to read between the lines too.”
– Seetha P
A Prisoner's Scrap-Book
Author
Publisher
Year
Length
Diary of Restoring Democracy through a Prison Expressed in A Prisoner’s Scrap–Book
The Emergency of 1977, better known as the darkest episode in India post 1947, saw the imprisonment of many leaders and the restoration of democracy was by far an unforgettable event in India’s history. A Prisoner’s Scrap–Book is an account of the unfolding of events of the Emergency as seen from a prison house. It is written by Lal Krishna Advani, who was one of the heroes of that struggle. The book is written in a simple and straightforward style embellished with anecdotes, and is not just one more prison diary, but is a heartfelt record of his thoughts and the events that took place on a day-to-day basis during his nineteen-month sojourn in the country’s jails.
During the Emergency, he was tested by many kinds of adversity and he spent those nineteen months behind bars, dispossessed of communication facilities, and even of personal contacts except for rare visits by his family. But he had amiable companions in prison, as well as a band of younger persons to exchange political ideas. As the scientist always thinks of new ideas, the patriotic intellectuals think of the problems of the nation. Those motivated him to write the diary. A Prisoner’s Scrap-Book has four parts, “A View from Behind the Bars”, “Underground Literature,” “Some Letters and Notes from Jail” and “Appendices”.
References:
http://oaji.net/articles/2019/
https://www.goodreads.com/book
– Vedant Paradkar
Second Year, Automobile Engineering
Mumbai University
The Tale of My Exile
A revolutionary journey in the most vulnerable prison expressed in The Tale of My Exile
Author
Barindra Kumar Ghose
Publisher
Arya Publishing House
Year
1922
Length
168 Pages
The Tale of My Exile, by Barindra Kumar Ghose, has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization. It is a must read for all those who not only like to learn about the colonial past but also who could look at life from a different perspective.
Barindra Ghose, Sri Aurobindo’s younger brother, was sentenced to death in 1909 in the Alipore Bomb Case, a sentence later commuted to transportation for life in the Cellular Jail at Port Blair in the Andamans. He was released from there in January 1920 as part of a general amnesty. Told with honesty and humour, this book is the story of his imprisonment with some of his fellow revolutionaries, from the Alipore Jail to the hold of the SS Maharaja to the Cellular Jail and a hard life of deprivation, forced labour, and humiliation by the prison authorities. Translated from the original Bengali into English by Nolini Kanta Gupta and first published in 1922, the new edition includes an introduction and editorial notes.
Courtesy and References:
https://www.sabda.in/catalog/bookinfo.php?websec=ENGD-JA-077
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/26680381-the-tale-of-my-exile
https://www.aurobindo.ru/sourses/pub/ghose_barindra_kumar-the_tale_of_my_exile.pdf
– Vedant Paradkar
Second Year, Automobile Engineering
Mumbai University
Disclaimer: The views expressed are personal.
These are some of the books which give the brutal truth about the prisons and Vartika Nanda has gathered those so we can easily access them and understand the importance of it. Except that she has her own books in which she has portraited inmate’s life in such a manner that common people like us who judge the prisoners would have a different perspective about their life. Her books give us a broad picture that we need to understand every human has rights to change, hope for the amelioration. Tihar’s book is poetry, that all the books and creative pursuits of Tinka point towards the softer side of prisons. Tihar brought poetry, Tinka Tinka Dansa is a live narration on jail life and Tinka Tinka Madhya Pradesh is a comparison of Indian jails with colors and real-life images#tinkatinka #Vartikananda
Kudos to DR.VARTIKA ma’am and The Tinka tinka foundation for all the lives they have changed. The prisoners go through a lot of plight and prejudice, thankyou tinka tinka foundation for understanding the inmates and showing the society an insight. Thankyou Ma’am #vartikananda #tinkatinka #jail #prisonreforms
The books mentioned justify the live of inmates and prison world. These books deeply connect with them and expresses their emotions. Tinka Tinka book series are one of them. The poem, photographs and painting adds beatific look to it as well as increases it artistic look. When you read these poems, your mind will be full of sorrow and guilt; you will have an image of it for life. Its captivating poems will create a new life in your life. The peom are mesmerising and heart touching.
#jailmovement #tinkatinkamovement #vartikananda #prisonreform #tinkatinka
One often comes across books on various offbeat topics, both fictional and non-fictional. But would we pick up a book based on prisons and life in prisons as our first choice? If the answer is no, then that same answer is why you should actually pick up a book on prisons, as reading them and delving into the world of prisons and prison inmates, their lives and their plight, their difficulties and issues is the only way to break the prejudices against prison, being fed to us by the society. A very well curated list of books, these are sure to give you food for thought! #vartikananda#tinkatinka #prisonreforms #jails #prisons #jailsofindia
A large collection of books on the inmates. The books mentioned portrays the hard ship in the lives of inmates. Tinka Tinka Dasna, Tihar, Madhya Pradesh , all these books in this category. The poems written by inmates in Tinka Tinka Tihar, paintings in Tinka Tinka Madhya Pradesh reflect the pain and agony of the inmates. Commendable initiative by Dr Vartika Nanda by bringingnout the hidden talent out of the inmates.#jailmovement #tinkatinkamovement #vartikananda #prisonreform #tinkatinka#prisonreforms#jails
I know additional ideas that work with this. If I may?