American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Ageof Mass Imprisonment by Sasha Abramsky  (3)
$12.75
|
Crime and Punishment in America by Elliott Currie  (8)
$10.88
|
The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge Studies in Criminology) by Marie Gottschalk
$26.09
|
Conned: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to The White House by Sasha Abramsky  (2)
$25.95
|
Punishment and Inequality in America by Bruce Western  (3)
$10.78
|
This item is not eligible for Amazon Prime, but millions of other items are. Join Amazon Prime today. Already a member? Sign in.
Hard Time Blues
and over 140,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle – Amazon’s new wireless reading device. Learn more
|
||||||||||||
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Consider this an anti-anticrime book. Journalist Sasha Abramsky believes America's exploding prison population is a fatal threat to civil society: "A democracy collapses in on itself if a significant percentage of the population are imprisoned for crimes committed because of economic want and the lack of legitimate jobs." The numbers tell a harsh story: a quarter century ago, fewer than half a million people were behind bars in the United States; today that figure is more than two million. In Hard Time Blues, Abramsky zeroes in on the experiences of Billy Ochoa, a nonviolent repeat offender who finds himself on the losing end of three-strikes laws, and Pete Wilson, the former governor of California whose political successes were tied to crime-fighting initiatives. The most interesting parts of the book focus on the political consequences of mass incarceration. In some states, 10 percent of the black population is in prison. Others disenfranchise felony offenders. It's possible to believe the American political scene would look rather different today if these criminals were also voters. Despite these interesting observations, Hard Time Blues may have a hard time of its own appealing to readers whose own sympathies extend more to the victims of crime than the perpetrators. --John Miller
From Publishers Weekly
Journalist Abramsky delivers a carefully rendered, emotionally charged portrait of America's embrace of maximum imprisonment and punitive justice over the past two decades. Focusing on opponents of rehabilitative ideals and casualties of punitive practices, Abramsky zeroes in on two principal figures: former California governor Pete Wilson, who hitched his wagon to the 1990s war on crime, and Billy Ochoa, a hapless middle-aged heroin addict who, under Wilson's popular "three strikes" paradigm, received a 300-year sentence for a $2,000 welfare fraud. Abramsky also looks at prosecutors, survivors of crime and victims' rights advocates, and corrections employees who energized the prison juggernaut, offering a poignant, disturbing view contrary to standard "tough on crime" rhetoric. He situates these personal narratives within broader transformations in urban life, public safety and media coverage of crime between the Carter and Clinton eras, whereby many politicians (particularly Wilson, Reagan and Gingrich) fortified their careers with sweeping, draconian laws in response to such phenomena as crack-related violence. The sad case of Ochoa, a nonviolent career criminal who poses little threat to society relative to the expense and harshness of his punishment, reveals what Abramsky interprets as the decimation and electoral disenfranchisement of minority communities via imprisonment. Abramsky skillfully navigates a difficult proposition: that while particular crimes like Polly Klass's murder (and the crack epidemic generally) are horrifying and demand justice, the wholesale forfeit of civil liberties and race-related mass imprisonment generated by the drug war will threaten society in the long term. The vibrant personal accounts in Abramsky's jeremiad distinguish it in a crowded field. Agent, Paul Chung.
See all Editorial Reviews
Consider this an anti-anticrime book. Journalist Sasha Abramsky believes America's exploding prison population is a fatal threat to civil society: "A democracy collapses in on itself if a significant percentage of the population are imprisoned for crimes committed because of economic want and the lack of legitimate jobs." The numbers tell a harsh story: a quarter century ago, fewer than half a million people were behind bars in the United States; today that figure is more than two million. In Hard Time Blues, Abramsky zeroes in on the experiences of Billy Ochoa, a nonviolent repeat offender who finds himself on the losing end of three-strikes laws, and Pete Wilson, the former governor of California whose political successes were tied to crime-fighting initiatives. The most interesting parts of the book focus on the political consequences of mass incarceration. In some states, 10 percent of the black population is in prison. Others disenfranchise felony offenders. It's possible to believe the American political scene would look rather different today if these criminals were also voters. Despite these interesting observations, Hard Time Blues may have a hard time of its own appealing to readers whose own sympathies extend more to the victims of crime than the perpetrators. --John Miller
From Publishers Weekly
Journalist Abramsky delivers a carefully rendered, emotionally charged portrait of America's embrace of maximum imprisonment and punitive justice over the past two decades. Focusing on opponents of rehabilitative ideals and casualties of punitive practices, Abramsky zeroes in on two principal figures: former California governor Pete Wilson, who hitched his wagon to the 1990s war on crime, and Billy Ochoa, a hapless middle-aged heroin addict who, under Wilson's popular "three strikes" paradigm, received a 300-year sentence for a $2,000 welfare fraud. Abramsky also looks at prosecutors, survivors of crime and victims' rights advocates, and corrections employees who energized the prison juggernaut, offering a poignant, disturbing view contrary to standard "tough on crime" rhetoric. He situates these personal narratives within broader transformations in urban life, public safety and media coverage of crime between the Carter and Clinton eras, whereby many politicians (particularly Wilson, Reagan and Gingrich) fortified their careers with sweeping, draconian laws in response to such phenomena as crack-related violence. The sad case of Ochoa, a nonviolent career criminal who poses little threat to society relative to the expense and harshness of his punishment, reveals what Abramsky interprets as the decimation and electoral disenfranchisement of minority communities via imprisonment. Abramsky skillfully navigates a difficult proposition: that while particular crimes like Polly Klass's murder (and the crack epidemic generally) are horrifying and demand justice, the wholesale forfeit of civil liberties and race-related mass imprisonment generated by the drug war will threaten society in the long term. The vibrant personal accounts in Abramsky's jeremiad distinguish it in a crowded field. Agent, Paul Chung.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
