Reading about prisons: Substance over sensationalism

Abstract

I try to read anything I find that relates to prisons. Usually, the crop is pretty thin. Over the past couple of years, however, a number of books have arrived on the scene. Some have been written by former guards and wardens, and some by journalists. These have some interest so long as one steers clear of personalized accounts that seem more like first drafts of a screenplay for a cheap movie. But these are not the only efforts that go too far. There seems to be a "blood and guts" attraction to stories about crime and the treatment of offenders that often encourages even professional writers to cross the line from objectivity to sensationalism. But this is not the only pitfall that makes some books more titillating than factually informative. Public attitudes about prison issues are potential political issues. It is easy for an author who wants to prey on "law and order" public attitudes to inject an ideological tilt into a book that permeates every chapter with rhetoric and turns it from an account into a diatribe. While good investigative journalists spend enormous time digging for details, and sifting through sources for reliable material, it is easy to stop at the source who satisfies the author's agenda. This is not to say that all prison books by journalists are wanting. One recent example of an interesting prison book was Conover's "Newjack"(') where a journalist went to work at Sing Sing as a guard and later wrote about the experience. This methodology has been referred to as "participant observation", and it produced a book worth reading. Whether you agree with Conover's take or not, it is clearly a serious attempt to convey a critical account of a difficult topic. Still, most prison books, outside of the realm of fiction, fail to deliver. They are either trite, uninformed or over the top.