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"In Inside Knowledge incarcerated people step forth as the primary witnesses and documentarians of the American prison's historical and ongoing defeat of the four cardinal rationales for the legal caging of human beings: rehabilitations, deterrence, containment, and retribution"--

This book places prison witness at the center of discussions of the human experience of law and order, and of the nature of the rights-bearing person. Readings of canonical and contemporary writers facing incarceration yield abiding literary tropes that chart the path from institutional abjection toward the minimal threshold of personhood.

Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The American Prison Writer as Witness -- Part One. Life on the Streets of Prison City -- The Life -- Ticket In -- Coping with Life in Prison City -- Ticket In -- Seeking Peace in Prison City -- Ticket In -- Family Life In and From Prison City -- Ticket In -- Part Two. The Rules of Law, Policy, and Practice in Prison City -- Inside Justice and Injustice -- Kite Out -- Civic Dysfunction and Its Critics -- Kite Out -- Mental and Physical Health Care -- Kite Out -- Community Activists -- Kite Out -- Prison and Reentry Programs -- Epilogue -- Editor's Afterword -- Glossary -- Further Reading -- Notes on Contributors -- Index