Robert Johnson and Hans Toch's Crime and Punishment: Inside Views is an edited volume of original essays written by offenders "in their own words." The book provides a unique, inside view of crime, prisoners, and the experience of punishment.
These essays represent the worldviews of 52 offenders, introducing the reader to the forces that shaped their lives and compelled them to commit crimes, their struggles with their own feelings, and their experiences--often rocky--with prison life and the criminal justice system.
Crime and Punishment: Inside Views is useful as a...

James A. Paluch, Jr., is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole. In this remarkably perceptive book, he offers the reader a detailed account of the daily realities of prison life in its mundane essentials, from the culture of the cellblock to the etiquette of the yard and the mess hall. The book also highlights concepts of prisonization, institutionalization, and the community, as well as the nature of modern punishment.
Here, Paluch walks us through a complicated, sometimes treacherous culture behind bars, a place where manipulation and deception often rule. He introduces...