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Texas Tough: The Rise Of America's Prison Empire (2010)

by Robert Perkinson(Favorite Author)

3.92 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0805080694 (ISBN13: 9780805080698)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Metropolitan Books

review 1: One of those books I repeatedly renewed from the library and then had to buy just to have one hand, because I know I'm going to forget most of it and have to reread in a couple of years. I've dog-eared almost every page to mark the bits worth reading twice. It's more than a look at Texan prisons; it's a rich history of the U.S. from slavery through to the present day. Disturbing, well-researched, well-written. Great book.
review 2: This is a fascinating book and perspective on Texas history, race relations, and incarceration philosophy. Heavily researched, it paints a pretty bleak picture about the futility of expecting prisons to have any sort of salutory effect for the prisoners themselves. The case he lays out is the argument for the conclusion; nonetheless,... more the conclusion seems like it could have been more strongly stated in the last few pages. But that is a minor issue in the overall scheme of things.My main suggestion is that this book would be much improved by a few well designed info-graphics. There's a ton of data about the growth of prisoners overall, relative to the population, in proportion with the drop in the crime rate, money spent, changes in sentencing laws--I could go on. I'd love to be able to use this as something of a reference book, but that will be difficult it its current form. less

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