A Prison and a Prisoner by Susan Sheehan (.PDF)
File Size: 31.3 MB
A Prison and a Prisoner by Susan Sheehan
Requirements: .PDF reader, 31.3 MB
Overview: George Malinow is a fifty-seven-year-old robber who has been in and out of prison (mostly in) since he was first put behind bars at the age of seventeen. He is an alumnus of Sing Sing, Wallkill, Clinton, and Attica, and is currently an inmate at Green Haven, one of New York State’s five maximum-security prisons. His life at Green Haven is fairly comfortable. His job outfitting inmates for parole with the set of street clothes the state allots them is anything but arduous, and he is able to spend most of his time stealing and eating better food than the prison’s mess hall serves, writing letters, painting pictures, watching television, and breaking such prison rules as not drinking liquor (without getting caught). He says that prison is “hell,” but it is a hell to which he has been irresistibly drawn.
It is Susan Sheehan’s particular skill as a reporter to recreate Malinow’s life in precise detail, without bias or moralizing, so that the reader is able to experience the prison world in all its complexity. Here is a strangely cracked mirror image of our society, full of contradictions and frustrations and occasional violence, not only for the inmates but for the guards and prison administrators as well. Contrary to popular wisdom, in the prison world — which seems part Alice in Wonderland and part 1984— there are few innocent prisoners and few brutal guards, few heroes and few villains. This book makes it clear that our so-called correctional system fails (at great expense) to correct and that rehabilitation is an attractive idea that has never worked. That is why A Prison and a Prisoner is well worth reading.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Biographies & Memoirs
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