Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire
Robert Perkinson
Mar 2010 · Macmillan + ORM
4.5star
4 reviewsreport
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490
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About this ebook
A vivid history of America's biggest, baddest prison system and how it came to lead the nation's punitive revolution
In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. The most locked-down state in the nation has led the way in criminal justice severity, from assembly-line executions to isolation supermaxes, from prison privatization to sentencing juveniles as adults. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became the national template.
Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, historian Robert Perkinson reveals the Southern roots of our present-day prison colossus. While conventional histories emphasize the North's rehabilitative approach, he shows how the retributive and profit-driven regime of the South ultimately triumphed. Most provocatively, he argues that just as convict leasing and segregation emerged in response to Reconstruction, so today's mass incarceration, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights.
Illuminating for the first time the origins of America's prison juggernaut, Texas Tough points toward a more just and humane future.
In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. The most locked-down state in the nation has led the way in criminal justice severity, from assembly-line executions to isolation supermaxes, from prison privatization to sentencing juveniles as adults. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became the national template.
Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, historian Robert Perkinson reveals the Southern roots of our present-day prison colossus. While conventional histories emphasize the North's rehabilitative approach, he shows how the retributive and profit-driven regime of the South ultimately triumphed. Most provocatively, he argues that just as convict leasing and segregation emerged in response to Reconstruction, so today's mass incarceration, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights.
Illuminating for the first time the origins of America's prison juggernaut, Texas Tough points toward a more just and humane future.
Ratings and reviews
4.5
4 reviews
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April 22, 2010
A bit dogmatic in its politics. The author seems to see corrections policy in terms of an unchanging ideological lexicon of Liberal vs. Conservative aligned with the modern political parties. This ideological approach seemed not to leave room for an option 3 in which modern liberal and conservative ideas bear little resemblance to their philosophical beginnings, and no correlation at all with modern political platforms.
But it was a very well-written and comprehensive sociological history of the U.S. prison systems, and was very well worth reading. It just would have been even better had it been written from a less evaluative and more historical, factual basis.
About the author
Robert Perkinson is a professor of American studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His writing has appeared in The Nation, The Progressive, and Boston Review, among other venues. Texas Tough is his first book. He lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.
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