A Country Called Prison

In America, prison is usually the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. Prison is seen as a hidden away place to keep the bad people out of society. This elephant is growing however, and threatening to change this view of prison and of criminals as destroying. The United States is th [...]
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In America, prison is usually the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. Prison is seen as a hidden away place to keep the bad people out of society. This elephant is growing however, and threatening to change this view of prison and of criminals as destroying. The United States is the world leader in incarceration. 716 people out of every 100,000 are imprisoned. If the US prison system were a country, it would be the 142nd most populated nation in the world. Aside from looking at the numbers, if we could look at prison from a new view as its own country rather than an institution made up of walls and wires, policies and procedures, and legal statutes, what might we be able to learn? In A Country Called Prison Mary Looman and John Carl attempt to answer this question by proposing a paradigm shift in the way that American society views mass incarceration.Weaving together sociological and psychological principles, theories of political reform, and real-life stories from experiences working in prison and with at-risk families, Looman and Carl form a fundamental fabric of understanding to demonstrate that prison is a culture, not purely an institution made up of fences, building, and policies. Life in this country called prison that is being proposed begins at birth, growing up in the prisons of disadvantage, abusive and neglected childhoods, and generational criminal families. Prison even continues after incarceration when ex-felons leave correctional facilities without legal identification of citizenship and money often leading them to return to their impoverished neighborhoods. Stuck in this prison of poverty, these legal aliens turn to illegal ways of providing for themselves, and often return to prison in the end. By viewing prison as a nation with its own identity and culture, Looman and Carl suggest concrete, doable, and relatively economic strategies for reform.