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A review by josephinebean
What's Prison For?: Punishment and Rehabilitation in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Bill Keller
4.0
rated: 4 stars
as an australian with little to no understanding of the cruelty of the american prison system, this was an incredibly eye-opening read. there is some really deep expertise in this book, and one of its strengths was that the experts that it used to talk about prison reform were mostly people who had been incarcerated themselves and were now working in the area professionally. there was no shying away from the idea that the prison system needs reform, and the wide variety of viewpoints of just how far that reform needed to go, stretching all the way to abolition, was really interesting to read and learn about.
the one thing i think that was missing from this book was exploration, or even just reasons, of what the negatives of the nordic prison systems are. it was great to see examples of how prison reform internationally had worked and how passionate activists were using that, but i struggle to believe that there is a perfect system for incarceration, and am now very curious about what these flaws could be.
overall, i think this was a great entry read into understanding america's incarceration system, and learning about this from the viewpoint of how can we reform it was a really strong way to introduce me to what the underlying problems of the prison system in america are.
I got an advanced copy of this book from Columbia Global Reports through NetGalley.
as an australian with little to no understanding of the cruelty of the american prison system, this was an incredibly eye-opening read. there is some really deep expertise in this book, and one of its strengths was that the experts that it used to talk about prison reform were mostly people who had been incarcerated themselves and were now working in the area professionally. there was no shying away from the idea that the prison system needs reform, and the wide variety of viewpoints of just how far that reform needed to go, stretching all the way to abolition, was really interesting to read and learn about.
the one thing i think that was missing from this book was exploration, or even just reasons, of what the negatives of the nordic prison systems are. it was great to see examples of how prison reform internationally had worked and how passionate activists were using that, but i struggle to believe that there is a perfect system for incarceration, and am now very curious about what these flaws could be.
overall, i think this was a great entry read into understanding america's incarceration system, and learning about this from the viewpoint of how can we reform it was a really strong way to introduce me to what the underlying problems of the prison system in america are.
I got an advanced copy of this book from Columbia Global Reports through NetGalley.