Rating: 
Summary: Hopefully you will never NEED this book!
Review: This is one of the most fascinating and disturbing books I have read in some time. Though I (thankfully) have never been caught in the "maw of the criminal justice machine" as Hogshire puts it, I literally could not put this book down once I started reading and I finished it in one afternoon!Hogshire takes you on a journey through our justice and criminal system from the "flashing blue lights" all the way to the electric chair. Remember the "Scared Straight" program back in the 1970s? Well this book should be required reading for all juvenile offenders - if this book doesn't set them on the right path, nothing will. One thing that disturbed me about this book was that Hogshire seems to lean too heavily in the favor of the criminals. Such as telling us where we can buy handcuff keys for example, or how to hide evidence. But even more disturbing is the growing power that we citizens have yielded to the government. For example, police can now seize property and initiate investigations based on anonymous tips alone and can apparently manufacture evidence against you very easily should you do so much as sass certain police officers at a routine traffic stop. There are few saints on either side here. Even if you plan on being a law-abiding citizen your entire life, you should still read this book and be aware of how easy it is for anybody to fall into the "machine."
Rating: 
Summary: No exaggeration of horrors of prison, but racism ruins book
Review: [The information in this book applies only to men's prisons]. This book is blatantly racist and gives false information about the racial demographics of incarcerated men who rape and incarcerated men who are victims of rape. At the same time, I strongly disagree with a couple of other reviewers who claim that this book exaggerates the horrors of prison life. One does not need to have any particular political viewpoint to acknowledge that U.S. prisons violate human rights on a massive scale. Read any ethnography about prisoners' experiences, or any of the reports by Amnesty International and other groups that specialize in documenting human rights issues. But be warned that the racism in this particular book prevents the author from painting an accurate picture of U.S. men's prisons.
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