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Texas tough : the rise of America's prison empire

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. This history of American imprisonment, from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric becomes the national template, and how that injustice can change. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, the author, a historian 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. 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 the origins of America's prison juggernaut, this book points toward a more just and humane future.

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  • ""Although the American prison system is based (somewhat) on the principle of rehabilitation, it still retains, Perkinson says, powerful elements of one of its original influences: retribution. By way of explanation, he examines the country's harshest, largest penal system, that of Texas, the state that reigns supreme in the punishment business. (In one city, Huntsville, almost half its population is in prison and another fifth works in jobs related to keeping them there.) Perkinson explores the history of the state and its penal system, showing how retribution, at least as much as rehabilitation, played a key role in the system's evolution; and, by extension, he sheds light on the evolution of penal systems across the country. The American penal system, he argues, is very much a product of its southern influences (and, as a sure-to-be-controversial corollary to that, the racial imbalance of its prisoners is a kind of backlash against the civil rights movement). A fascinating and often deeply troubling book."--David Pitt, Library journal."
  • "A history of the Texas penal system, the nation's largest, which argues that retribution, more than rehabilitation, played a key role in the system's evolution, that the American prison system is a product of its southern influences, and that the mass incarceration of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights."
  • "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. This history of American imprisonment, from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric becomes the national template, and how that injustice can change. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, the author, a historian 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. 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 the origins of America's prison juggernaut, this book 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. This history of American imprisonment, from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric becomes the national template, and how that injustice can change. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, the author, a historian 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. 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 the origins of America's prison juggernaut, this book points toward a more just and humane future."@en
  • ""Although the American prison system is based (somewhat) on the principle of rehabilitation, it still retains, Perkinson says, powerful elements of one of its original influences: retribution. By way of explanation, he examines the country's harshest, largest penal system, that of Texas, the state that reigns supreme in the punishment business. (In one city, Huntsville, almost half its population is in prison and another fifth works in jobs related to keeping them there.) Perkinson explores the history of the state and its penal system, showing how retribution, at least as much as rehabilitation, played a key role in the system's evolution; and, by extension, he sheds light on the evolution of penal systems across the country. The American penal system, he argues, is very much a product of its southern influences (and, as a sure-to-be-controversial corollary to that, the racial imbalance of its prisoners is a kind of backlash against the civil rights movement). A fascinating and often deeply troubling book."--David Pitt, Library journal"
  • "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. This history of American imprisonment, from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric becomes the national template, and how that injustice can change. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, the author, a historian 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. 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 the origins of America's prison juggernaut, this book points toward a more just and humane future. -- from Back Cover"

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  • "Electronic books"@en
  • "History"
  • "History"@en
  • "Nonfiction"

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  • "Texas tough : the rise of America's prison empire"
  • "Texas tough : the rise of America's prison empire"@en

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