"I believe in the human capacity to innovate, to imagine, to create. Prisons are a failure of imagination in the most tragic sense of the term," says Baz Dreisinger (Near Black), associate professor at John Jay College and founder of Prison-to-College Pipeline. She spent two years visiting prisons around the world--Incarceration Nations is the astounding culmination of her undertaking.
Armed with compassion and a vast knowledge of incarceration history, Dreisinger explores facilities from Rwanda to Australia. She examines innovative programs implemented to reduce recidivism, such as restorative justice in South Africa, rehabilitation through music in Jamaica and reentry in Singapore. She works up-close and personal with inmates while teaching a creative writing course, a drama workshop and a nonfiction class. And the details of her travels are supplemented with related background and staggering statistics.
Dreisinger's zeal to change the penal system is contagious. Her optimism is reflected not only in her words, but also in the meaningful relationships she forms with prisoners, prison employees, even her taxi drivers. And her narrative illustrates the vital connection between those individuals, underscoring the enlightened theory she encounters in Norway, "Treat them like human beings and they will act like human beings." Incarceration Nations is crucial reading for the world's largest jailer (United States) and the rest of the global population because, as Dreisinger points out, "changed policy is a product of changed public consciousness. We all have a hand in that mission." --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts