Customer Reviews

With Liberty For Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America

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This exhaustive study of the criminal justice/prison system in America proves beyond doubt that the criminal justice sytem is biased against minorities, political dissidents, and (always) the poor.

From colonial times to the present, horrors have been committd in the name of justice. What is so disturbing is that today, 500 years later, many of the exact same abuses continue. Women are raped. Men are beaten, and almost no one is rehabilitated.

Why is it that prisons are the only industry where one can fail over and over, and the only consequence is that we build more and more of the exact same thing?

I use this book every year in my Deviant Behavior class. While it is not the most exciting book, it does an amazing job of showing how our penal system developed. Though hundreds of years have passed, and many amendments have been made, it is still very much the same.

With Liberty For Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America

This beautiful book with such a misleading title appears to be a book about prisons! Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is a book about the formation of the labor, force in the USA. Starting at colonial times with colonies exposed as for profit business enterprises which acquired labor in the form of children kidnapped from the streets of European Cities and sold on the Eastern Sea Shore by their owner; the captain of the ship that brought them there. The slaver y was for the lifetime of the slave, so the offspring were free. Free but penniless and beholden to the employer for the job. The fear and worship of the business honor was ground into their bones using the whip, increasing work quota, and prison. Great scholarship, self-effacing style, but very accessible book. I claim that you will understand (several things, e.g. why most people feel they are entitled to nothing!) .a lot better after you read this book.

As a private investigator this book has enabled me to better understand the roots of the current criminal justice system, the many shortcomings of the system, and the harsh realities faced by generations of prisoners in this country. I highly recommend it. I have shared this book with several attorneys and two California state life prisoners (victims of the three strikes law). There is something in it for everyone. If Ken Burns is out there, he may want to make this the subject of his next documentary series!

I am distressed by Americans who ask "how could the German citizens have tolerated the Nazi horrors" but who keep voting for tougher and tougher treatment of prisoners. This well written and well researched book describes the history of prisons (and you will be surprised by some of the earlier ideas about the purpose and functioning of prisons) for the past 500 years. I wish it would be required reading in all schools.