Product Description

A judge hands down a stretch in a local, state, or federal prison. It's time for some serious life lessons. With the crime rates soaring in the United States and the prison population growing faster than at any time in American history, staying alive and well -- both mentally and physically -- is tougher than ever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44432 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From Library Journal
In the 1960s, peace groups issued leaflets to their members on what to do if arrested during nonviolent demonstrations. Now two criminologists have come up with a guidebook on surviving the criminal justice system that is loosely modeled after these earlier leaflets. The crimes have expanded to include far more weighty ones than civil disobedience. Ross and Richards (coauthors, Convict Criminogy) offer advice on what to do if your front door is bashed in by police in a drug bust and how to avoid fatal legal mistakes. Writing in sections under topical headings, the authors follow an anonymous everyman (or woman) through an arrest, a trial, and an incarceration. The legal system they depict bears no resemblance to the one in school textbooks. It is the enemy. The authors describe different types of prisons and suggest how to deal with the correctional officers, the other inmates, and various types of discipline. Finally, they discuss making parole and returning to life on the outside. An appendix offers a glossary of prison slang and a statement about the status of prisons in America today. Overall, this is an absorbing, original book that should be required reading for criminal justice classes. Ostensibly intended for the person who is caught committing the crime, in reality Behind Bars gives the outsider an in-depth look at what it is like to be in prison in America today. Highly recommended for all libraries.
Frances Sandiford, formerly with Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, NY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Some good prison info but padded with bad legal advice
The chapters on how to survive prison are decent, but I believe that after the authors finished writing them, they realized that they had only about 100 pages and they needed to plump the book out. Unfortunately, rather than delving deeper into the promised subject matter -- I would have liked to read excepts from interviews with former inmates, and anecdotes about mistakes they made in prison or how they prevailed in bad situations -- the authors added sections decrying the U.S. penal and legal system and the war on drugs and, most egregiously, dispensing often incorrect or misleading legal advice.

I am a criminal defense attorney. One of the biggest problems I have with the book is the reckless advice that a defendant should generally not plea guilty and rather take the case through trial. There's a good reason that over 90% of defendants plead guilty, whether their lawyers are retained or appointed, and it's not because those lawyers coerced them into doing so. It's because the rise of sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums have made it Russian roulette for many felony defendants to go to trial. At least where I practice, many plea offers can save defendants significant jail time compared with a trial conviction. Look, I love to try cases, and it's great to get a client with a decent case and the willingness to fight it all the way, but taking a loser case to trial is usually a colossal mistake for the defendant, one which can cost them years. The book's broad claim that it's generally better to go to trial is no substitute for a skilled and honest lawyer's individualized assessment of the strength of a case and the risks of a trial verdict.

There are also preposterous claims in the book about the legal system, such as that if marijuana is found in a car and one of the car's occupants previously pled guilty to a crime while the other occupant was convicted of a crime after trial, then the marijuana will be pinned on the person who pled because the prosecutors feel it'll be an easier conviction since the guy will presumably just roll over again. That's ridiculous -- in fact, both will be charged with the weed. The authors also claim, erroneously, that defense lawyers owe their allegiance to the legal system at the expense of their clients. That is the type of misstatement which breeds a mistrust of defense attorneys, and that can hurt defendants if it causes them to disregard good advice from their attorneys. The authors do better when they stick to what they know -- how life is in prison -- rather than speculating on how the legal system works.

The authors also try a little too hard to make their case that the criminal justice system is blatantly rigged, and it comes off like propaganda. I am someone whose professional experience has made him wary of the criminal justice system and acutely aware of the disproportionate power of prosecutors and police, but when the authors start claiming that police may be paying informants with narcotics, I become skeptical about whatever the book claims as fact. Look -- there's enough wrong with the laws and the criminal justice system that an author doesn't need to make the system appear to be an overt, sinister compact between judges, prosecutors, cops and defense attorneys to railroad people.

The book places an undue emphasis on the minority of cases which involve conspiracy convictions, prosecutions for selling fake drugs to undercovers (so rare!), cooperation agreements, and no-knock home raids. Little misleading comments, such that there are people in federal prison for merely failing to repay their student loans, detract from the book's credibility. The authors try too hard to sell the reader on the injustice of it all, but they really don't need to clobber the reader over the head with dubious and paranoid claims. The real problems with the system are inflammatory enough!

That said, the middle section of the book regarding prison life is instructive, and I assume it's not as misinformed as the earlier section but rather founded on personal experience and solid research. If you're going to jail, this is a useful book, but skip the first few chapters and be skeptical of the information outside of the authors' area of expertise.

Do Not Think This Book Will Never Apply To You
Most Americans are blissfully unaware of the massive prison complex that surrounds them in America. Unless they have themselves had the misfortune to get caught up in the maw of our criminal justice system or have a close family member who has, they generally have no idea of how our systems of prisons are operated. Many of them have the notion that prison inmates loll around on their bunks all day watching TV or while away their days lazily shooting baskets out in the prison yard. Reading this book, co-written by one who has actually served some substantial prison time, will quickly disabuse them of those notions.

Prisons today are essentially warehouses where inmates are shuffled from place to place like cattle. You will learn how at any given time, there are a hundred or more buses transporting prisoners from one prison to another all over the country and that some prisons actually have their own airports, at least one of them capable of receiving commercial jets! There are now nearly 2 million people incarcerated in jails and prisons across American and nearly twice that many if you include those on parole or probation.

This is a no-nonsense book that give you the low-down on the prison system in America today and how to survive within it. For those who may feel that this book will never apply to them, don't be so sure. The United States is now one of the most tightly regulated and policed nations in the world. There are so many laws on the books these days that even lawyers and judges can't figure them all out. It is not as hard for a law-abiding citizen to unwittingly run afoul of the law as one may believe. Have a couple of drinks at dinner and have the misfortune to have a car wreck that results in fatalities - or hit a pedestrian - and you will likely serve some time in prison for manslaughter. If your neighbor decides to grow some marijuana plants in the back corner of your property, it is YOU who will likely have your property seized and a stiff mandatory prison sentence will be meted out to YOU and not your neighbor, unless you can afford a good lawyer to prove otherwise. With all the laws on the books these days, the possibilities are virtually endless. That is why this book should be read by all. For it is indeed possible that even a non-violent, law-abiding citizen such as yourself may someday land in jail or prison.

The authors of this book do not have a political agenda, like most other books on this subject. They do not take the side of the inmates nor do they seem to have a vendetta against those who run our prison system. They simply discuss life in prison as it exists today and they provide very practical and sound advice for those who must enter into it.

What I found most disturbing about this book was that our prison system is doing virtually nothing to rehabilitate prisoners and to prepare them for their re-entry into civilization. Inmates seeking to serve their time and better themselves so that they can start a new life outside the prison walls are frustrated at every turn. Education inside the prison walls are barely tolerated and even frowned upon by prison authorities, who fear loss of control (when inmates get educated and can, for example, write intelligent letters to the media about prison conditions). Inmates must deal with hostility and indifference and must learn to survive in a brutal atmosphere where at any time, they could get "shanked" by a fellow inmate or "thrown into the hole" for simply trying to defend themselves. One of the great tragedies is when a first-time prisoner serving a short sentence for some non-violent crime such as marijauna possession is victimized so badly by his fellow inmates that he is forced to defend himself or join a prison gang for protection. If he should kill one of his tormentors, his 3-5 year sentence has now been converted to life. If he befriends the prison gang, he begins to hang with hardcore criminals and his chances of staying out of prison once he gets out is greatly reduced.

I'm no bleeding heart liberal. Prisons should not be fun places to be. Anybody leaving the prison system should never want to go back there again. But I do believe that our prison inmates should be prepared to lead productive lives when they are released from prison. Otherwise, they will have no choice but to link up with the bad elements that got them into prison in the first place. Putting released inmates on a Greyhound bus with a cardboard box and a $5 bill is insane. Might as well just install revolving doors on those prisons.

This Book Tries to Do the Impossible
Prison is a mean ugly horrible place. The rules are all subjective until someone wants them to be otherwise. Prison is about politics not justice in America. Prison is about so much more than just what what happens in the court room.

There is NO book that can teach you to survive in prision because, life in prison is never a static picture. Prison life is just that LIFE. The minute you take an physical or intellectual snapshot of a living thing it changes in the next instant. The whole deal about surviving in prison is being able to adapt to change. Prison is an environment whose constantly changing factors are designed to keep newbie's and punks off guard. Prisons are run by the convicts with the help of the officers in ways designed to maintain many differing constantly shifting balances of power.

In prison Alliances needs passions angers and the power that goes with them are in constant play shifting ebbing and flowing to meet the needs of the moment. Survival in prison is all about making sure you know what the next game is BEFORE IT IS PLAYED by the officers or inmates. Each prison has its own heartbeat, culture and niches' that no one book could ever prepare you for. Simplistic answers to complex problems like to avoid rape fight for all you are worth in prison is stupid. Yes fighting will delay a rape but fighting alone is just posponing a rape in prison.

Surviving in prison is about fighting but also includes using your cunning to situate yourself in ways that give others reason not to see you hurt. Sometimes surviving prison is about being more brutal, cold hearted or creul than others. Smart people with skills can sometimes survive because, if you can write great legal breifs or have other other legal skills valued in prison you can work it to your advantage so you have protectors.

Develop non-sexual skills that help those with power in prison so they help you in return. Help strong respected inmates who have nothing but personal protection to offer you in return write, draw, learn to read or achieve some other life goal they want for themselves. I guess what I am saying is their is no one cut and dry way of surviving prison. What you must do to survive prison is learn to see opportunities that allow you to survive without being turned out before anyone else sees and takes advantage of them.

Funny as it seems there are some inmates who are tired of the stupidity of prison and they would protect from all harm someone who is teaching them. Prison is about learning how to see and exploit every opportunity to survive you can identify before it is detected by your fellow inmates or destroyed by prison staff \ administration. No book can teach you how to survive prison because surviving prison part instinct, part psychology, part bluff, part bare handed fight and part a sadistic will to do whatever it takes to survive. A book that hopes to teach you how to survive prison is obsolete the minute the words are written because, prison life changes in real time.

In prison you can get your head kicked in for just being unimaginative with your game because, if your game is lame it is considered a disrespectful insult to those you are trying to run it on and that can lead to a brutal fight. Read the book for fun and background but don't expect any book to prepare you for survival in prison because no matter how good a book is, prison life is so much more hellish and real than even the best intentioned man's words can convey.

Surviving prison has to be done in a way that conveys your own style because trying to follow a books advice on surviving prison is like thinking living in prison is a recipe you can copy. Surviving in prison is no recipe it must become part of who you are on the deepest levels of your psyche and soul because it it is not you will be beat down for being fake, not real. See if you think a book will prepare you for prison life you will be up hells creek without a paddle when that book runs out of ideas. This book will not have the right solution for every issue you will face in prison life. The book can not supply dynamic solutions and problems in prison are the most dynamic you will ever face because, change from moment to moment is how convicts and officers keep you off guard and ready to be used and exploited. Real inmates don't need no book to survive prison and that will be your down fall that will tell on you.

Use the book to get in touch with the person you are on the level of the most real and prepare that person for prison situations you see in this book. First rule of survival in prison is keep it real, if you can really fight fight, if you can really con then con, if you can exploit then do it but be true to your skills. There is no such thing as fair in prison anything that allows you to survive another minute in prison is as an intact man is always fair. Your job in prison is to survive by fighting to be and stay real without BS about your life and your dealings with others. See everything and say nothing. Never snicth and sometimes to avoid more beatings by knowing when to take a beating prison is filled with complicated decisions that no single book can ever deal with fully. Thats the problem with this book it answers questions but not in the detailed ways that take into considerations all the complexities of prison life.

You are a fool if you think prison inmates are not smart. Convicts are some of the smartest people alive they are in prison because they chose to employ their vast skills to antisocial tasks. No one single book will ever explain the complex nature of surviving prison life so read the book for insight but don't go inside thinking you KNOW prison life because this book could make you just smart enough to make dumb mistakes prison might not decide to forgive.