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Dreams from the Monster Factory: A Tale of Prison, Redemption, and One Woman's Fight to Restore Justice to All

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To some degree like the author, I found myself in law school because I was fueled by passion about making a difference in the world. Rather than following my peers to their respective button-down law firms, I spent time working in the Brooklyn DA's office. There, I learned about the drag, the hustle, the administrative red-tape, the endlessness of the criminal justice system. You learn in law school that there are two main philosophies on why the penal system exists: the retributivist line (give 'em their just deserts) and the utilitarian line (the penal system is there to reform those who've wronged). I am a hardcore retributivist, a law-and-order type.

I was really expecting Sunny Schwartz's book to be about some hippie, do-good woman wallowing in the boo-hoo stories of prisoners and justifying why we taxpayers should do more to help them overcome the "injustices" of their lives. I was pleasantly surprised. Dreams from the Monster Factory forces those of us who are familiar with the penal system (and who've developed a thick skin to its shortcomings) to face the uncomfortable fact that our prisons are simply not working, but there actually exists real and tangible ways where we can fix them. I was especially taken with the way she herself shared in the average man's anger with these convicts; she shared disgust with the crimes they committed against their victims. But she channeled that disgust beyond retribution and revenge; she wanted to break the cycle.

The most compelling reasoning she shared felt like a light bulb going off in my head. We all want to punish these individuals. We want them to feel the pain that they've inflicted on others. Well, these prisoners do feel the punishments. Being in jail really does suck the life out of you. But the problem was that the criminals made no connection between the punishment they were experiencing and the crimes that they committed. They felt no remorse; it was always excuses: "The man was against me", "I was high on drugs", or "She was disrespectin' me and wouldn't lay off." Without making the connection between their actions and the consequential prison time, they took no responsibility and instead spent the duration of their punishment growing rage. And 90% of these raging people are set free, some day.

I respect that the writing of the book was so straightforward. She related some of the failures of her program straight on. And yet, so much of it gave me so much hope. There is some autobiographical content and she shares the stories of fighting her own demons. It helps to see how the kind of therapy and self-awareness skills lacking in the prisoners are the same kinds that can also be impaired in law-abiding, every day people.

I applaud her work. I think that this was one of the best books on the criminal penal system that I've read in a long time. Prosecutors, politicians, law professors, students of criminal justice and law, criminal attorneys, prison guards, and probation officers alike should read this book. I highly recommend it and I hope that the author's message spreads.

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Dreams from the Monster Factory is a quintessential beacon for anyone seeking to produce a work of hope out of a world of disillusion. In this seminal text author Sunny Schwartz adeptly weaves anecdotes from her personal narrative with illuminating stories of her professional struggles.

Dreams from the Monster Factory thrusts the reader into the often enraging world of the criminal justice system. Rather than dismissing the incarcerated as sub-human reprobates or reducing her own story to one of falsely sequacious tropes, she commits herself to an honesty that is at times painful--but always rewarding--to read. Schwartz dismantles and subsequently reconfigures the hackneyed trope of restorative justice programs as soft on crime. Indeed, it is through her very reconfiguration of this binary that she manages to strike the delicate balance between a ruthless quest for justice and an overriding sense of optimism in humanity. Never falling prey to the traps of pedantry, Schwartz's great gift as a narrator is her ability to apply the same ruthless scrutiny to herself as to her often overwhelming surroundings. Through her steely nerves and professional perseverance, she defies naysayers and dastards to create RSVP, one of the most innovative and successful restorative justice programs in the world.

On the concluding page of her epilogue, Schwartz writes, "In my dreams, we remake the monster factories into engines of accountability rather than instruments of retribution and despair." In my own dreams, this infinitely inspirational text will appear on the syllabi of every undergraduate at universities around the country. At my own university, I foresee no small amount of feuding between myself and my colleagues over who can stake a claim to this extraordinary text. Perhaps someday Schwartz will develop an RSVP program for academia...

Having been burned a few times in the past by lawyer-authors, I was a little hesitant to pick up this book. However, as a current law student, the concept intrigued me and I was willing to give it a try. I was not disappointed.

I think the first part of the book, the examination of Sunny's life, is an important set up. To understand her passion, one must understand her. In order to accomplish that, we need to know where she came from and what motivates her.

She presents a balanced account and is respectful of both sides of the issue. Her personal accounts and the statistics that back up what she has written. Like Sunny, I want to see criminals punished, but I do not want the punishment to make them worse; I would like it to help make them better.

From my early childhood, I knew that I wanted to be an attorney and in my early days as a law student, I decided I never wanted to work in criminal law. While I maintain that stance, I am glad to know that there are people out there like Sunny who have taken up this campaign and fight to make a difference. It would be nice if this were required reading in law school. While some of us might not want to practice criminal law, we need to appreciate what happens to prisoners and why we need even more respect for the lawyers that fight for their rights.

Sunny Schwartz began as a crusading advocate for prisoners--viewing guards as the enemy, and prisoners as victims of abuse. She finished law school, and went into private practice. All the time wondering whether the system was really doing anyone any good. Criminals went in, were treated badly, got out, committed a new crime, and went back in--over, and over, and over.

Then the San Francisco Sheriff decided to try an experiment. He set up one unit of the jail with a new model. intense programming, built on mutual respect. Guards treating prisoners as humans, and insisting on the prisoners treating both the guards and each other in the same way. Sunny became director of programs in this unit--where she seems to have spent her entire adult life.

It works...sort of. The unit itself works well. There is significantly less violence--both physical and verbal--and even the guards generally agree it is a better place to work. There have been some documented success in reducing the recidivism rate, but many continue in the cycle. At least, the cycle involves less violence. The reincarcerations seem to be mainly drug offenses, rather than crimes of violence.

If only Sunny's programs could be coupled with the decriminalization of drug possession, coupled with free treatment for addicts, then we might see some real success.

One final note: those reviewers who say there is nothing unique or ground breaking about the programs Sunny describes must not have spent much time in prisons and jails. Virtually every one focuses on retribution--making life as unpleasant as possible for prisoners, with no time at all spent on ensuring that they are released with a mindset and skills which will keep them out. It is amazing to see a program which breaks from the mold.

Sunny has produced a book which not only describes this wonderful program in some detail, but which is highly readable. Highly recommended.

By the time she finished high school, Sunny Schwartz was on a lot of "least likely to succeed" lists. Sunny was always in trouble for skipping school. Her grades were marginal. She fought with her brothers.

Fortunately, Sunny's brother Stevie was about to enter his junior year at University of Arizona in Tucson, far from Sunny's home in Chicago. Like many people who grew up in homes that were dysfunctional but not abusive, Sunny thrived as soon as she found herself in a new environment. Encouraged by her new friends, she explored her artistic side as well as her personal identity. She gained the courage to enter a junior college and eventually graduated from law school in California.

Sunny found her calling when she worked in the jails as a legal intern. She graduated law school, passed the bar, held a series of jobs and finally was invited to a position that became her life's work. She was invited to start some rehabilitation programs for inmates. And at a conference, she saw a pamphlet about restorative justice that would change her life and the life of many prisoners.

Amazingly, with relatively little experience, Sunny ended up heading this new program. Sunny's experiences with the program make up the second half of the book.

RSVP was designed to help men end the cycle of violence. Through intensive classes and workshops, inmates learned to accept responsibility and manage anger. There were no riots in the RSVP dorm. Deputies found their workplace less stressful. And the taxpayers would save money.

Sunny is honest about the program's outcomes. Some prisoners did return to the system, but rarely for violent crimes. I suspect some needed life skills and the war on drugs doesn't help.

I found myself equally fascinated by Sunny's personal transformation as well as the larger transformation in the prison system. I'm impressed with Sunny's own ability to relate to top law enforcement officials as well as prisoners. She would have to have incredible charisma and people skills. While many prisoner stories will lack a happy ending, Sunny herself seems to have pulled herself up to success, overcoming her own obstacles and odds.

Recommended for anyone interested in the criminal justice system or in personal growth and change.

In one of his interviews after landing Flight 1549 safely on the Hudson, Captain Sullenberger said that he didn't consider himself a hero because he didn't choose to be in that situation; he was simply doing his job. He humbly pointed to all the unsung heroes -- our teachers, nurses, and many other unglamorous professionals -- who should get credit for the dedicated work they do every day, giving of themselves so that others can thrive.

There is no one more deserving of Sully's definition of a hero(ine) than Sunny Schwartz. While our natural instincts tell most of us to stay as far away as possible from murderers, rapists, or gangbangers, Ms. Schwartz has dedicated her life to confronting the dark shadow of our society we'd all rather forget about. While no one would blame her if she just punched her time card and lived for retirement, this remarkable woman embarked on a journey into the belly of the beast over twenty years ago to get to the root of a vicious criminal cycle, and by sheer persistence and relentless compassion unearthed the deeper causes of human suffering.

Like the old story about the Buddhist monk who tells his disciples that the way to tame the barking dogs is to run toward them, this is a story about deep healing through confronting our demons. By acknowledging that we are not separate and that in fact the most hardened criminals are human beings, and thus, a part of all of us, her RSVP program opens up the possibility for healing in a system set up for retribution.

What makes "Dreams from the Monster Factory" so powerful is that it isn't an academic exercise but a deeply authentic personal account. The author's memories of growing up in a rough neighborhood on Chicago's South Side explain her own psychological bruises and invite the reader to go on a journey with her, rather than just taking a fleeting glance at prison life through a peep hole. But somehow her energy and sense of mission feel deeper than even childhood wounds: If you're comfortable with the idea of reincarnation, you wouldn't hesitate to place the author on the other side of the iron gate in a past life, seeing a part of herself through the bars in her current lifetime.

Aside from the transformational quality of the story, it is really well written, so kudos also to her co-author David Boodell. A fiction writer would have a hard time coming up with a more spellbinding, soul-tickling story, and I ate it up in one sitting. Ultimately though, this story is not just about Sunny Schwartz, the criminal justice system, or the particular characters in the book, but a reminder to all of us that in order to find love and forgiveness we cannot lock away anyone's wounded heart, including our own.

As the author states, there are many ways for life to fall apart, which seems to say that people need many options for putting them back together. Unfortunately, options for convicted criminals are limited and in the current economic climate are often the first to be reduced even further . "Dreams from the Monster Factory" is a compassionate, honest and challenging discussion of the programs Ms. Schwartz advocated for in the San Francisco jails. Discouraged with the established treatment (or lack thereof) found in correctional facilities, she took a different route ~ investing in the success rather than the failure of the people who are incarcerated, calling them to accountability in a productive way, requiring participation in educational and vocational classes and anger management programs that actually address the root causes of violence. Not to say that it is 100% effective or without problems but its hard to argue with cutting recidivism by 80%. One of the things that comes through clearly is that reducing violence and improving the overall health of the community must be the responsibility of every individual. The wardens, deputies, lawyers, social workers and the prisoners, victims, educators and folks like you and I coming together around the belief that there is always the potential for remorse and forgiveness, change and growth. The subject matter is difficult but the book itself an engaging and hopeful read. If knowledge is power, Monster Factory has the potential to fuel significant positive change in this area. It also contains helpful information on the relationship between shame and violence, addiction and some of the experiences that will enhance or destroy self-esteem.

The description of this book is a little misleading. It would have you believe that it is all about the RSVP (Resolve to Stop Violence Program) and ideas for reforming our abominable criminal justice system. (That last bit about the "abominable system" are my words and not part of the description.) It becomes that, eventually, but not until about 70+ pages of a 200-page book. Until then it is a memoir--haven't we had enough of those yet--told in the typical memoir style of infusing an otherwise fairly normal childhood with painful Freudian significance and centering on the memoirist as though Sunny Schwartz, alone, could see the failings of the criminal justice system she worked in. Even more irritating for me was the snarky style that, had I not felt compelled to read this through as a Vine choice, I'd have given up on after a couple of chapters.

I'm glad I didn't, because it eventually became the story of the development, implementation, and relative success rate of RSVP, which represents a holistic approach to violent crime that includes bringing perps and victims together and getting violent criminals to accept responsibility for their actions. The second half of the book--over which I am guessing Sunny Schwartz had more control than her co-author--is totally different, told in a calmer, more mature voice and giving credit where credit is due, to all he people who helped develop the program, get it off the ground and keep it running. Still some of the most important points are lost, such as that the program is only running in two places in the country, funding is a constant struggle, and it isn't getting nearly the recognition it deserves.

I have enough writer friends trying to get books published that I won't blame Ms. Schwartz for these problems. I can just imagine her agent/editor telling her how no one wants a book about prison reform, but memoirs are selling like hot cakes, and then assigning a co-author to turn the book into this unfortunate hybrid. In fact, I can think of lots of people interested in a book about the RSVP program such as the 100 or so people with whom I volunteer as well as judges, lawyers, law enforcement and corrections officers, and any one else connected with the criminal justice system. However, not only is it asking a lot of busy people to weed through all the extraneous preliminaries, it would be awkward for a professional to suggest this to staff when it includes far more about things like the author's love life than most readers would need or want to know.

Still, if you have a professional or human interest in our criminal justice system; if you, like me, feel it is failing and badly in need of innovative ideas; and if you are willing to pay full price for what amounts to half a book (or, better yet can get it from your library), then you will benefit from reading this.Dreams from the Monster Factory: A Tale of Prison, Redemption, and One Woman's Fight to Restore Justice to All

Derided as a do-gooder by guards, suspected as a "pillow fluffer" by inmates, Schwartz fought to gain trust in her legal advocacy-- and respect, the currency behind bars, once lost cannot be easily regained. Her even-handed narrative covers her twenty-seven years in the nebulous "prison-service community" at San Francisco County Jail. She mixes her own story as a remedial student, a natural misfit, who when she came out as a lesbian to her Chicago Jewish family encountered her own challenges. Her relationship with a brother who failed to silence his own demons in his increasingly unstable mind adds heft to her own realization of human frailty under pressure.

This narrative intersperses her own efforts to find personal balance with her prison stories. Halfway into her career, she discovers the concept pioneered by psychologist James Gilligan of "restorative justice." This seeks to make prisoners take responsibility for their actions, past and present, and to make amends to their victims so as to prepare to return to the community. 90% of prisoners will get out. Most do so after nine months served for violent crimes; the "throw away the key" model while filling new prisons to over double their capacity may please law-and-order voters, but it fails to rehabilitate these men and women who've damaged themselves (90% are addicts) as well as others inside and outside their cells. 70% of prisoners return to prison; 90% have never had a legal job; 75% read at a fifth-grade level and the same percentage lack high school diplomas.

Schwartz makes no excuses for those she serves. She's weary of hearing inmates demand their constitutional right to watch "Jerry Springer" who never admit any remorse for those they've harmed. She wants prisoners to accept that they made bad choices that landed them inside, and to start to reverse their patterns of blaming everyone but themselves for their inability to turn themselves around. Her mediation does place her often at odds with the guards, and she has to argue back to earn their respect. She falls in love with a female deputy warden and her battles at their home deepen her insight into the tensions that guards face as well as their charges. (See my reviews of Michael J. Santos' "Inside" for the prisoner's p-o-v and Ted Conover's "Newjack" for a correctional officer.)

She emphasizes for her own RSVP program the need for inmates to overcome their own "fatal peril," the violent moment many who share the "male role belief system" have when allowing their shame to get the better of their judgment. This deep shame triggers them to lash out violently when they feel "disrespected." By conducting workshops that confront the male prisoners with victims of crime (particularly poignant is Jean O'Hara, a grandmother of a baby killed along with her daughter by a drug-desperate addict robbing their home), RSVP and "Manalive" programs try to get the prisoners to settle down and look inside themselves to learn to control their reactions. Instead of calling on their "inner hit man to reassert control," Schwartz and her colleagues try to defuse this spark that sets off unstable men over and over.

Does the program work? Schwartz admits some inmates return, but at least it is for drug-related offenses far more often than violent ones, so this may be progress. The problems of "three-strikes laws", the outrage understandably raised by parolees who commit heinous crimes, and the "war on drugs" raise complex issues no one program can solve. Still, and Schwartz does not shirk the program's shortcomings, it has improved lives. She reminds us that the RSVP aims are not new; but "biblical" as they seek to make the wrongdoer accountable for his actions, and to repair the harm caused to his victims and the community that he lives in and to which he will return.

The book moves very rapidly, and can be read in a couple of sittings. I would have liked, given what she admits as "San Francisco cliches," to have known as a California taxpayer why a female inmate has an hour in her daily schedule for "acupuncture." As you might expect from the City by the Bay, yoga, meditation, and peer counselling augment the educational offerings as reforms at the "program facility." Classes are mandated for all inmates at her County jail branch 7, run by an ex-con who did time for murder before becoming its superintendent. Such novelties provide an intriguing counterpart to the usual state institution where little correction occurs and much coercion, and both guards and inmates welcome the change. Perhaps by this book, such steps towards true rehabilitation will become more common for the other three million incarcerated in America today.

It drives me crazy when people say "If it ain't broke don't fix it"! But more terrifying is when we know there is a problem and don't do anything about it.

Author Sunny Schwartz lived through her own challenges and troubles, directly and indirectly, and put those experiences and observations into her life's work. Unlike many authors, her life's work is not her first book. Doubtless someone convinced her to write this. This is the kind of story we can all relate to because we so often learn things the hard way. But if the intention of making a better life can rise up again and again some progress can be made.

What is important about this story is that Sunny Schwartz was able to recognize that the prison system in America is built on a concept that will not change or reform prisoners, is expensive and difficult to maintain, and may often do more harm than good.

For far too long the demographics of who gets incarcerated and for how long, how many repeat offenders there are, and where they go when and if they get out are staggering, sobering and scary. Sunny Schwartz helped assemble a visionary project in the San Francisco jail system, which has since been replicated in a jail near NYC, that helps the most dangerous prisoners, those convicted of violent crimes, to face ownership and accept responsibility for what they have done. But this program also helps them get to the root of how they came to this dangerous place and how to restore them to a place of civility in society. As you may imagine, these 'converts' often become the best teachers and some have gone on to become facilitators in this same program.

This story is told in a very heartening way. Ms Schwartz's revelations about her life and her work are humble and enlighten her path. She doesn't make herself out to be anything like a hero or martyr. She is street smart intelligent and the reader gets the sense that no one else could have drawn these conclusions, no one from academia, law enforcement or government.

It is a good story when the right person is presented with a mythic challenge and meets it head on. It's a better story when it is true and the result makes the lives of countless individuals better, but more importantly makes society a better and safer place.