To Book Clubs and Reader Communities
If you are an administrator, or even simply a member of a book club or a reading community group, this book and other books by this author could be great recommended reading for your group. Prison reform is a popular issue in America NOW. Putting humans in prison is an interesting topic which could enable deep and insightful discussions among your readers or membership.
It is a certainty most people have firm opinions about crime and punishment like how much resources should be devoted to warehousing prisoners versus correcting offenders and attempting to make them better members of the communities they will be released into. Don't forget that of the several million incarcerated men and women only a fraction won't be released at some point.
I, as the author, would be very grateful and honored to have my books read and discussed by as many people as possible. My goal is to get people thinking about the whole issue of incarceration in America because I believe in humanity as a whole being capable of a better solution for responding to crime.
Following are some suggested discussion questions and comments. Of course you should construct your own or alter these in any manner for your group discussions of recommended works.
1. Have you now, or ever have had, anyone in your circle of family, friends, or acquaintances who have been or is incarcerated? Including yourself of course. (with several millions of incarcerated people in the US chances are high your answer will be affirmative. This shows this issue already touches more lives than one might realize)
2. Do you believe in punishment being the response to crime that will do the most to decrease it? (You might be surprised to learn studies show that the more punitive the response to crime is the more the likely and offender is to commit further crime)
3. Can you see the connection between for-profit companies inserting themselves into the prison system and prison becoming an industry that requires the prison beds to be filled up? (For profit businesses must strive to make a profit. If you have made some aspect of prisoners existing the basis of your business model your goal isn't to have less prisoners)
4. If the companies didn't envision a way to make a profit they would never have moved into the criminal justice arena. For them to profit it is reasonable to imagine the beds must be kept filled with offenders If this is true then policies are being enacted to further their hoped for ends. These policies will directly affect how prisoners are incarcerated and what the hoped for outcome of incarceration is. I propose that for a company needing prisoners to base their income stream upon the ideal scenario is for incarceration to cause further re-incarceration.
5. Once you accept that for profit businesses have and will affect the policies of incarceration to ensure the supply of prisoners their profits and bottom lines are based on-you must accept that the crimes this supply of prisoners will commit has the effect of creating victims of crime. At what point is the influence of the for profit entities goal of making money from prisons and prisoners actually responsible for the creation of these victims of crime which might not have been created if the incarceration focus could have been on community reintegration?
