Are there any new books out on life in prison?

Question

I have read the hothouse, go-Boy, and alot of the older ones, just wondering if anyone knows of some more recent ones out there

Answer 1

I don't know.

Answer 2

Check at www.amazon.com, or Author House (they self publish there and there are tons of self published books that never make it to the big book sellers).

Another thing is to get yourself a prison pen pal and ask them. Be careful though, they are often angry and irritable. If you get lucky, you can find one who is still not hardened and genuinely loves to write. A good place to find one is at www.writeaprisoner.com You can even send them a free email there which the agency forwards.

To the person who said that visitors fall away; well maybe if they weren't expected to spend $20 or so on vending machine food for the inmates, they would visit more often. But it's the only way the inmates can get decent food.

If you care about prison reform, be sure to write your legislators and let them know.

Answer 3

Yeah, Martha Stewart's biography in jail --- they also turned it into a movie ...

Oprah also had Lisa Ling go into prisons ... the men were like caged animals, but the women were very docile and repentant ... it was almost like looking into a girls boarding school rather a prison ... the girls found ways to heal each other from their pains ... but there were some really scary - scary individuals in the female prisons.

Answer 4

Prison: you're 18: get sentenced to 50 years. With good time, you might get out when you're 48, given you're granted parole your first time on the board hearing. You still cling to hope your futile lawsuit on the state will go in your favor, making you rich. You hope your backup plan to snag some Social Security/ disability benefits will fall in your lap. Heck: you're 48 and a newly freed person: you feel too old for work! The state took care of you this long: why have them stop....make them pay---and pay you dis time, right?

But I'm a bit ahead of myself: what happens in between???

You enter into a new life. Under the written laws, enforced by the guards, there's the UNWRITTEN laws--drawn up by convicts and established over years of heart-aching time locked away from freedom.

Don't help matters if you're an alcoholic or crack addict: each day, even with the medications--it's still a devil you wrestle with.

You find each morning hard to get up out of your near flat bunk from the depression of being made to live here. Gulity of the crime, h e l l yeah....but in prison--everyone was "bum rapped" bad by the pole-lice; you're angry at everybody else but yourself for being locked up.

Working hard labor? Not for you.....oh....you got a plan: you try to manulipate the "system": have them think you're physically or mentally unable to do the labor in "the camp"; it's fine by you if you can con them into just letting you "lay out", having the state pay to keep you locked up.

Family? They all say they'll never leave you. But as the years go, they fade on. Make the collect calls....and either they no longer answer, the line's been disconnected....or they got new unlisted numbers. The wife or husband still out there? They eventually let you go, too: at least the divorce is free.

Eventually, the visits dry up too. Count yourself lucky if you can snare people in the neighborhood to replace them to visit. And you always ask if they can make a deposit into your drawings account on their way out. If you're real lucky, you might see pictures of your growing kids; they were just out of diapers the last time they came up to visit you. By the time they're free, they're adults--and they don't even know you.

The letters you send eventually come back refused eventually, so you work at snagging other people in the 'hood to write/send you money, if anything.

You actually find some long years pass with NO calls, visits OR letters written to you.

And every second locked up in between, you're called upon to do some pretty ugly things sometimes; life happens that way when you're kept away from people because you broke the law. But it's better than doing totally without experiencing the right way.

Have I left out anything? Your question prompted me to fly through my notes; my interviews from REAL long term prison inmates. I was going to write a book much like the one you're interested in.

Answer 5

I can tell you what it is like in prison seeing I did 5 years not so long ago for something I did that was just plain stupid! Email me and ask away it might be better than a book.

If you have seem prison break, well jail in reality is nothing like that. That show is probably only 5% of what jail is like.

Anyway good luck

Answer 6

The only one I have read is You Got Nothing Coming: Notes from a Prison Fish

I really enjoyed it.

For an online look at prison life read this blog

http://prisonpete.blogspot.com/

Answer 7

Thinking of a career change are we?