Book Report on the Hot House by Pete Earley

After being incarcerated for a petty crime and sent to a chain-gang jail, Lucas Jackson (Paul Newman) has risen up the ranks of the establishment and become the prisoners’ idol as well as the guard’s enemy. Jacksons’s contrasting relationship with the guards and the prisoners is an important

Carl Bowles an inmate for 23 consecutive years. He had a record as a sexual predator. Carl Bowles was known for forcing weaker inmates to satisfy his pleasures. Bowles was practically raised in a jail cell with all the prison rules and regulations; to him it was his house. He was first arrested when he was 12 years old. He had been convicted for

This week’s reading focused on prisons. The Society of Captives was written by Gresham M. Sykes in 1958. He conducted a study on a maximum security prison in New Jersey. Chapter 1 focused on the prison and its settings. The author goes into detail about the size of the cells and what the prison actually looks like. He also writes about how the prisoner is no longer seen as man but as a number. My Sunday school teacher visits prisons to teach about the bible. He has commented to me that is exactly how certain correction officers see the prisoners. They are nothing but a number to some individuals. This can lower their self-image (Sykes, 1958).

Inmates at Shawshank were often beat within an inch of their lives by the administration at Shawshank in order to instill a sense of obedience and to keep enforcing routine. Head Guard Captain Hadley would on occasion hurt the prisoners so much they would die of injury’s they sustained from him. “Black man, white man, red man, yellow man, it doesn’t matter because we’ve got our own brand of equality. In Prison every con’s a nigger and you have to get used to the idea if you intend to survive men like Hadley and Greg Stammas who really would kill you just as soon as look at you. When you’re in stir you belong to the state and if you forget it woe is you. I’ve known men who have lost eyes, men who have lost toes, Men who have lost fingers, I knew a man who lost the tip of his penis and counted himself lucky” (44) this shows the lack of moral judgment

February of 1964 brought more criticisms to the penitentiary. In a study done by Myrl Alexander, Director of the Southern Illinois University Center, he stated in a 15 page report, that there were “many” problems at the penitentiary.

Conover also covers all of this, describing the overwhelming confusion of a new officer’s first days in a crowded housing unit, illustrating the newjack’s reliance on the helpfulness of prisoners, portraying the obvious unfriendliness and unconcern of higher-ranking coworkers, and exhibiting the unavoidability of making critical and even life-threatening blunders in the tumultuous world of the prison. In doing that, Conover assists readers in getting beyond the stereotype of the ruthless guard to see correctional

The author of Descent into Madness discusses how systems of criminal justice that engage in high levels of disorganization become nothing short of a breeding ground for discontentment among prison inmates. The other main point is that prison staff psychologically are hungry for power. This manifests in the myriad of ways that they treat the inmates in an effort to feel powerful through by retribution through their

Conditions inside the prison were no better. For starters, many of the prisoners were those who had committed menial crimes. Worse so, many were war heroes, back from Vietnam who couldn’t find a job and thus had to go about other illegal means to stay alive, and thus were thrown in prison. Attica prison in particular was famous at the time among prisoners for having the most horrific treatment of their inmates. Guards did whatever they could both legally and illegally to keep their prisoners in perpetual fear and discomfort. The prisoners were not just treated like children, but as animals. The one thing prisoners treasure the most is their contact with the outside world. It keeps them sane and allows them to remain in some type of contact both with their families as well as with what is going on outside the prison walls. But, guards did whatever

Ted Conover’s book, New Jack, is about the author's experiences as a rookie guard at Sing Sing prison, in New York, the most troubled maximum security prison. He comes to realize that being a correctional officer isn’t an easy task. This is shown from the beginning when he is required to attend a 7 week training program to become a correctional officer. He comes to realize what inmates have to endure on a daily basis. Throughout his experience into a harsh culture of prison and the exhausting and poor working conditions for officers, he begins to realize that the prison system brutalizes everyone connected to it. New Jack presents new ideas of prisons in the United States in the ways facilities, corrections officers, and inmates function with

fast as HIV. "Ebola does in ten days what it takes HIV ten years to accomplish,"

In Robert Perkinson’s book, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire, a remarkable amount of a decade’s worth of in-depth research is given regarding Texas and it’s astounding past regarding racism, prisons, and penitentiaries. Perkinson’s finding lead to how the only way to escape what could be the continuation of tragedy in this nation is to examine the history of this nation’s most severe prison state, Texas.

Conover’s purpose in writing this book not only to share his experience as a correctional officer but to also help readers get beyond the stereotype of the brutal guard seen on television and rumors but to see correctional officers as individuals, offering us a chance to understand

After reading the book I have gained a new understanding of what inmates think about in prison. Working in an institution, I have a certain cynical attitude at times with inmates and their requests.

Hassine begins his narrative as he is entering prison but this time as an inmate. Prior to his incarceration, Hassine was an attorney (Hassine, 2011). Even then as an attorney, the high walls of prison intimated Hassine (Hassine, 2011). As Hassine was being processed into the system, he expressed how he systematically became hopeless from the very prison structure itself as well as because of the intimidation he felt by uniforms. Prisons of the past actually had a goal to aid individuals through rehabilitation by instilling new values in order to correct the wrongs that one may have committed during their lifetime but today this is no longer true. . Hassine draws colorful depictions of how dim and unfamiliar a prison can be in which instills fear in an individual soon as he or she

When we do research on daily prison life, we come across two typical but less than ideal situations: either social imaginaries cloud our judgment or information provided by the prisons themselves hide certain weak or bad aspects that they do not want to make public. We can also find information on TV, but most of the time it either exaggerates or minimizes the facts. In order to obtain more reliable information, we have to have access to people who are working or have worked in this institution, and such will be the sources of this essay. We will be describing and giving examples of prison violence according to three types of violence: sexual, physical and psychological violence.