What's Prison Like in Rwanda? Thailand? Norway?

As one who has spent more than 20 years as a volunteer teacher in prison, I wanted to read Baz Dreisinger's Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World. Dr. Dreisinger is an Associate Professor in the English Department of John Jay

College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, and the founder and Academic Director of the Prison-to-College Pipeline program, which helps incarcerated men and women obtain college degrees. Before talking about the book, however, let me lay a little pipe.

We Americans lock people away in prison for four reasons: (1) as punishment for a criminal act; (2) to remove dangerous people from society; (3) to deter others from doing the same thing; (4) as an opportunity to change—to correct—criminal/anti-social behavior. Spelling these out, of course, raises all kinds of questions. How much punishment is appropriate? Is losing one's freedom enough punishment? Does prison—even long mandatory minimum sentences—deter crime? (One student told me that the certainty of being caught deters crime, not a long sentence.) Is it even possible to correct a person's behavior? We call them correctional institutions, but does anyone think they correct anything?

With a background as a "white English professor specializing in African-American cultural studies, a Caribbean carnival lover who is also a prison educator and criminal justice activist, a freelance producer for National Public Radio, [and] an agnostic New York Jew," Dreisinger took two years to visit prisons in Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Jamaica, Thailand, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, and Norway, comparing and contrasting their prisons and answers to the questions above to America's answers. She visited prisons and met with prisoners, staff and officials, criminal justice advocates, and more.

The result is a number of fascinating snapshots of very different institutions, culture-bound in some ways, American-influenced in others. For example, "Throughout the colonial world . . . prisons served the aims of whites, extorting money by the way of bribes to stay out of prison and obtaining free labor from prisoners for cotton production . . . colonial powers adroitly manufactured reasons to put bodies behind bars." (So that could be reason (5) for locking people away: Obtain cheap labor.)

Perhaps examples of American-influence are drug laws. "Across the globe, draconian drug policy is packing prisons. Drug users and traffickers represent more than half of those in federal prison in the United States and Mexico, a quarter of all those in prison in Spain, and one-fifth entering prison in Japan; in Malaysia they constitute more than half of the nine hundred incarcerated people awaiting execution. And these are mainly small-time users, more than 83 percent of them, worldwide, convicted of possession."

But while much of the news is grim (don't get arrested for drug possession in Singapore), it's not all dire. It turns out that, given the Australian experience, private prisons may not be all bad all the time. Thanks to Thailand's princess, the country's prisons for women are becoming less oppressive. Norway is showing the world its commitment to corrections over punishment. Whether the positive lessons can—or should—be replicated elsewhere remains in my mind an open question.

I thoroughly enjoyed Incarceration Nations for the insights Dreisinger gives into foreign prisons. I would have enjoyed it more with end notes and an index. It does have an extensive bibliography, but, buff that I am, I would like to be able to look up the original studies she cites. Nevertheless, I recommend the book to anyone interested in incarceration here and elsewhere in the world. 

Who Should Be in the American Writers Museum?

Plans for the American Writers Museum

The American Writers Museum plans open in March 2017 in Chicago, a block north of Millennium Park on Michigan Avenue. According to the website its mission is "to engage the public in celebrating American writers and exploring their influence on our history, our identity, our culture, and our daily lives.

"The American Writers Museum will:

• Educate the public about American writers – past and present
• Engage visitors to the Museum in exploring the many exciting worlds created by the spoken and written word
• Enrich and deepen appreciation for good writing in all its forms
• Inspire visitors to discover, or rediscover, a love of reading and writing

"Through innovative and dynamic state-of-the-art exhibitions, as well as compelling programming, the American Writers Museum will educate, enrich, provoke, and inspire the public."

It sounds great, and I was wondering who all will be included. Considering that the Library of America has already published almost 300 volumes of the works of American writers, including several anthologies assembling several authors, I wonder who will be included, and who may be overlooked. Clarence Budington Kelland? Erskine Caldwell? Robert Riskin? Edna St. Vincent Millay?

Who do you think should be included in the American Writers Museum? And why?

Why you make friends with librarians

I have the impression from the comments I read on websites for writers that many self-published authors do not fully appreciate a basic marketing law: Consumers must first be aware a product exists before they can consider buying it. This is why we have press releases, reviews, advertising, interviews—anything to get the word out.

And you want to get the word out to people who buy and read books. Independent bookstores have always been a wonderful source of getting the word out. There was a time (perhaps mythical, perhaps real) when the bookstore owner and clerks knew their customers' interests and preferences well enough to suggest new titles. (Amazon is trying to accomplish the same thing with its "Customers who bought this item also bought" lists.)

Libraries are also filled with people who read books—and, according to Library Journal—50 percent of the people who start an e-book they've downloaded from their library actually buy the book. I have been giving my book to libraries where (a) I have a relationship and (b) the library is willing to put the book into the circulating collection, which is not always. However, in some cases, the librarian has actually put the book on display where, as in the display illustrated here, it was immediately checked out.

In the best of all possible worlds, the patron read Death in a Family Business and liked it enough to recommend it to friends and acquaintances and, like ripples in a pond, the friends told friends and so the word got out.

The Best Book Covers of 2015

Matt Dorfman, the art director of The New York Times Book Review, has chosen what he feels are the best covers of 2015.  His brief introduction to the dozen covers makes a couple interesing points: "When considering the book as a whole, I prefer that the interiors contain answers and the covers ask questions. To the extent that my favorite reading experiences empower me to confront uncomfortable truths and honest answers about people, societies and the greater universe, the covers that lure me into the pages often do so by posing questions that I don’t want to ignore."

One of the best covers of 2015

He also notes that today books and their covers are having to compete for attention with everything from Jumbotrons to smart phones to wristwatches. The article reproduces the covers that made him "stop, stare and ask aloud to no one in particular what the cover means, only to turn to the first page and then the following and then the one after that and onward.'