Introduction -- A brief history of imprisonment in America (1600-1900) : Imprisonment in colonial America ; American prisons after the revolution : State prisons; Federal prisons; Privatized prisons -- The twentieth-century prison-building binge : State prisons : Prison subcultures; Manufacturing and marketing fear of crime; Recent expansion of the prison-industrial complex ; Control units -- Federal prisons in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries : Early federal prisons : Leavenworth; Atlanta; McNeil Island; Notable early federal inmates ; The building boom begins : Alacatraz; Marion ; The building boom accelerates : UNICOR, ADX -- Profiting from punishment: corporations and American prisons : Selling products and services : The prison telephone business; Transporting inmaters for profit; Profiting from prison healthcare ; Private financing for prisons : Lease-revenue bonds: public money goes to corrections corporations ; Profiting from inmate labor : For-profit corporations and inmate labor ; Privatized prisons : Inmate escapes, inmate-on-inmate violence and guard violence; Arguments for, and against, privatized prisons -- The final solution: capital punishment : Early methods of execution ; American methods of execution ; Capital punishment since 1977 : Executioners; The federal death penalty; A statistical look at capital punishment in the United States; The costs of capital punishment; Arguments in favor of capital punishment; Arguments against capital punishment -- Less visible prison minorities: women, children and the elderly : Female inmates : Female inmates and their children ; Sexual abuse of female inmates ; Children as inmates : Growth in long-term U.S. children's lock-ups; The character of children's prisons; Children held in adult lock-ups; Children and the American death penalty ; Elderly inmates : Growth in the elderly inmate population; Problems faced by elderly inmates and their keepers; Elderly female inmates; What should be done? -- Prison by-products: violence and disease : Prison rape : Prison rape; Abating prison rape ; Other forms of prison violence : Gangs and prison violence; Inmate-on-inmate violence; Inmate-on correctional officer violence; Correctional officer-on-inmate violence; Prison riots ; Prisons and disease : AIDS; Tuberculosis; Hepatitis; Skin infections; Phantom illnesses -- The future of prisons in the United States : Factors favoring growth ; Factors favoring shrinkage : About the death penalty and executions ; What can be done?
Summary:
Imprisonment has become big business in the United States. Using a "history of ideas" approach, this book examines the cultural underpinnings of prisons in the United States and explores how shared ideas about imprisonment evolve into a complex, loosely connected nationwide system of prisons that keeps enough persons to populate a small nation behind bars, razor wire and electrified fences. Tracing both the history of the prison and the very idea of imprisonment in the United States, this book provides students with a critical overview of American prisons and considers their past, their present and directions for the future.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.