Customer Reviews

Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America's Prisons

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The book is terrific! It is a must read for anyone who has an interest in the criminal justice system. The book is more than just an expose on what is wrong with this country's prisons. What makes this book special is the stories of individuals who have been unnecessarily abused while in prison or jail, sometimes resulting in death.

No one will be able to finish this book without being moved. The tales of the mentally ill (does everyone know that the 3 largest facilities for the mentally ill in this country are jails?) are particularly engaging.

In fact, I suspect Mr. Elsner has made himself some enemies. There are probably prison wardens and prison guard unions across the nation who will not be inviting him to dinner any time soon.

The book makes 2 compelling points: first, the problems in the prisons cannot be isolated to the prisons and
second, the solutions do not require additional spending but rather some long range thinking.

As a prosecutor in LA for the past 19 years, I don't agree with every point that the author makes and I don't consider myself soft on crime. Nonetheless, I will take the book to work and encourage all my colleagues to read it. The book is an important reminder of the negative consequences of a "lock em up and throw away the key" attitude. The author obviously did his homework. One can only hope that lawmakers read the book and make an effort to give the system more balance. Most prisoner will get out. Treating prisoners' illnesses and giving them a minimal amount of education and/or job training makes us all safer.

(Disclosure: I was interviewed for the book, as were several of my colleagues.)

This is a very fine work on a serious subject which impacts us all. The author judiciously combines hard facts and statistics with "human stories" to present a compelling argument as to why the "crisis in America's prisons" needs to be heeded by everyone. The real strength of the book is that it doesn't matter what end of the political spectrum you come from or what your views on punishment vs. rehabilitation are. In the final analysis, basic rational self-interest dictates that the central problems identified in this book - massively rising costs, the creation of a permanent criminal underclass who are "recycled" back into society, catastrophic mistreatment of the mentally ill and the spread of infectious diseases - need to be addressed by society as a whole because none of us are insulated from their effects. Of course it hardly needs to be said that many of the stories, particularly those about the mal-treatment of highly vulnerable inmates - the physically weak, the mentally ill and the young - are heartbreaking and I don't want to downplay this aspect of the book as it's one of its great strengths. However for the many who chose to paint their world view on a black and white 'good guys vs. bad guys' canvas (and, I'd suggest that it's this way of thinking, at least in part, that has contributed to the current problems), this book should be equally persuasive. In the words of the Reagan-appointed Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is quoted in the final chapter of the book: "...Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long".

I'd like to finish this review with a question inspired by this book: at a time when America has invested so much in spreading it's message of civilization and democracy abroad, how is this aided by many of its own States still requiring that incarcerated pregnant women deliver their offspring in shackles ?

Alan Elsner has captured the dark picture of America's secret. He has revealed to all his readers the stark reality of what America's desire for vengance has cost. Get tough on crime makes good political sound byte. Lock them up and throw away the key wins elections. The reality of "out of sight - out of mind" has lead to a picture of America that is more comfortable in a third-world dictatorship. Our prisons become darker and darker places as they devour people of color, women, the mentally ill, the addicted, and the inept.

I spent the last thirty years working in the prison system, while watching it get bigger and "badder." Now as a professor, I am trying to tell my criminal justice students that America can do a better job finding justice other than locking up everyone that doesn't fit in. Alan Elsner captures the reality of a place that cannot help but be awful. The best of prisons are terrible, dark places. Every American should read this book and ask himself, "Is this the best the 'land of the free' can do?" Good work Alan on writing about a subject that most Americans don't want to think about.

This book will be mandatory reading for my criminal justice students.

I read this book and was so glad to hear that there is a voice out there for the incarcerated masses. My husband is a victim of the system and there are many others. Although there are a large population of men and women who belong in prison, there are also a multitude who were not properly represented and were made statictics out of. Also, the treatment of prisoners is subhuman. Whether or not a person is convicted of a crime, he/she is still a human being and deserves to be treated like one. This book shows the horrible treatment received by inmates and clearly shows that persons with mental illness are treated as animals. It is sickening. Anyone out there who boasts for crime and punishment should re think if someone in there immediate family gets inadvertantly tied up into the system through fault or even no fault of their own. It happens people. You better not point fingers...it might be your father, brother, husband, son that is stuck in this horrible place for a small crime that they blow up to catastropic sentences.. I am glad to see someone out there really seems to care besides me and others that have loved ones incarcerated. Thank you Alan Elsner for showing the truth...

Before reading this book I had general impressions about prison life based upon thin slices of reality provided by media reporting and political rhetoric. I also relied on the fiction and stereotypes created by movies and television. The author discussed many of the human and economic issues that are not widely known and provided compelling statistics to put the costs to society in perspective.

A friend recommended I read this book. At first I didn't want to, but after a few pages I was hooked. I had no idea of some of the horrors that go on in our prisons. Women being forced to give birth chained to beds, guards putting prisoners in restraints for 48 hours, seriously disturbed mentally ill people living lives of misery and making life miserable for all around them.
I am not soft on crime but I don't support abuse either. And Mr. Elsner has proven to me that our prisons are way too abusive. He has also given a good deal of thought to fixing some of the larger problems. This is a tough-minded book but it is also a sensible and rational one. I recommend it to anyone who cares about our nation.

This book was profoundly shocking to me. I knew that prisons were tough places but I had no idea how tough, and how often toughness turns into brutality and neglect. The wealth of detail the author provides is overwhelming. But he also has sensible suggestions for reform, ideas that are not political so much as commonsense. Conservatives and liberals alike could find a lot to agree with in this book. It should be widely read because it has a message impossible to ignore.

"This was, simply put, a great book. It was superbly written and researched. Best of all, the author, Alan Elsner, has not merely pointed out the problems with our prisons, but has made thoughtful suggestions on how to improve the system. Whether you are Black, White, Democrat, or Republican, this is an issue that affects you. A must-read."

Elsner reveals startling truths about the hell to which a citizen of US may be legally doomed. Liberal or Conservative, I recommend this book to anyone worried about his or her freedom - not freedom from Iraq, North Korea, or Islamic militants, but freedom from an out-of-control justice system right here in the homeland.

Elsner provides a wealth of statistics to show when and how we came to live in a "prison nation." Thanks in large part to an ill-conceived war-on-drugs the prison system has grown to monstrous proportions reminiscent of the Military-Industrial Complex against which President Eisenhower warned us. The book is also rich with anecdotes illustrating the system's destructive impact on our prisoners and their families.

You may think of the worst horrors of the dungeons and gulags of the world and comfort yourself with the thought that "it can't happen here."

The bad news: it is happening here.
The good news: Elsner shows us the way reform the system and fight our way back to sanity AND safety.

Well researched, well written and a topic we need to read about. Alan Elsner has shared the real world of prison behind bars to which we subject our neighbors for crimes involving consenting adults or petty thievery. He's shown us that prisons are disease ridden places that are excellent schools for making good people with bad habits into bad people and making `bad people much worse'. He's also brought a very real danger forward in showing us that America is allowing violent felons to remain on the streets because the potheads are taking all the beds. Totally Bas-Ackwards to the goal. States highest in incarceration are also highest in poverty and we are milking the last of life's blood from these people. He's also provided an excellent argument for abandoning the private prison industrial complex and ceasing the attack on urban America and the mentally ill. As someone who works in business and in finance, it bugged my eyeballs when I realized what government is doing, allowing prisoners for profit. I've worked 32 years in a profit driven capacity and doing this with human beings, given what I know about shareholder driven environments, is unconscionable in my mind. To intentionally profit from another's pain and misfortune is heinous. America has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the worlds prisoners. We have over 1,000 prisons and 7 million people under penal control (2004). Over half of them non-violent offenders whose crime involves consenting adults (ie: life in prison for introducing a buyer to a seller of home grown pot in Indiana) or petty thievery (ie: 25 years to life for stealing vitamins in California). Communist China and Russia have less prisoners than we do and China has 5 times the population. We lead the world in per capital incarceration and the shear volume of our population that we incarcerate for long periods of time for victimless crimes.