From Library Journal
Miller distinguished herself as the warden of both the Huron Valley Women's and the Men's prisons in Michigan. In this diary of her 20-year career, she introduces the inmates and staff she met and recounts many of her experiences as a woman in a previously all-male domain. Miller writes with wit and poignancy, yet she leaves readers wanting more. There is a great deal of previously untapped material here, but the author seldom goes beneath the surface to reveal the whys and wherefores of life in corrections. Because of the information it contains, this book should be of interest to criminal justice collections. It is an optional purchase for other libraries.?Frances O. Sandiford, Green Haven Correction Facility Lib., Stormville, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Miller recalls her career in corrections in a series of anecdotal flashbacks, from her hiring as a probation officer to satisfy affirmative action guidelines to her retirement from the Michigan prison system as warden at the men's maximum-security Huron Valley Prison. Before 1972, virtually no women in the U.S. worked as corrections officers in men's prisons, although such an assignment was requisite for promotion. (Now, 13 percent of officers in men's prisons in the U.S. are women; of the 644 federal and state prisons for men, 53 have female wardens.) Miller considers her determination to succeed in a system weighted against her the result of overcoming the traumas of her early years. During her time as a warden, she supervised two minimum-security women's prisons, Camps Pontiac and Gilman, and the Huron Valley women's and men's prisons. Her readable account entertains as it informs about a woman's success at work that was once assumed unsuitable for women. Whitney Scott
