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Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire
Product Type: Book
Product Price: $35.00
Manufacturer: Metropolitan Books
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Description
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.
Reviews
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-07-13
Summary: "Insightful History To Modern Class-Subjugation"
I found this work to be of great insight... Profound in its ability to trace forward a currently ingrained cultural bias from its slavery roots, dealing specifically with Texas.
I was unaware that a century ago the Klan was the most powerful political force in Texas. After 'emancipation', the freed slaves had to be kept in check. We know about the 5000+ lynchings, but most are unaware of the 30,000+ that died under horrific conditions while being 'sold' to plantations and levee-building projects. Wealthy non-colored businessmen also used prisoners to protect their elite status and quell labor-movement uprisings. The widespread use of inmates (mostly black) kept them in their chains and gave the South back its cheap source of labor that the region's two great wars had fought to keep.
We all know that black men have it rough. But did you know that in Texas they are more likely to go to prison than complete a college education?
Women have traditionally been a small segment of our prison population, but that is changing. There are now more women in prison than the total inmate population in the U.S. in 1950.
Interestingly, it has been disproved that the rate of incarceration has a strong causal relationship on crime reduction. Mr. Perkinson quotes a point 25 correlation. There seems to be other factors at work... but don't think it has everything to do with poverty either. He shows that poverty is not as strong as a correlation to crime as one might imagine.
We grow up learning about the justice system in our country, specifically a trial by a jury of our peers. We come to find that 90%+ of cases never get to trial. The prevailing attitude is that many have to plea bargain, regardless of innocence, rather than face the stigma of added punishment and bias due to the using our courts time.
So, all said, mindsets of the past still exist and sometimes even flourish. The prison population explosion over the last couple decades leads to a lot of concern. It leads to a new way of keeping a population subjugated. It leads to a new second-class citizen. Over 2 million Americans are in prison. In Texas, one person in seventy! Many are eventually released, having served their time, only to find a culture even more so stacked against them. Largely this population has its heritage in the most disenfranchised among us, the slaves. They will never have a say in government. There voices are seldom heard. They have no vote.
The word "penitentiary" has its roots in penance. The Texas prison culture has marginalized that view considerably, seeming to take the view that someone who commits a crime cannot change his nature, and is always evil.
There is a lot of eye-opening information in this book that will put our current prison population and discrimination problem in the law into perspective. Hopefully this nicely presented information will help us as a country take a better stand on our own internal justice system so that we may advise other countries on our stuggles, and how we corrected them... rather than just commanding and chastising other nations that are behing this necessary curve of morality that we ourselves have been riding.
Five Stars, no reservation.
Rating: 1 / 5
Date: 2010-06-07
Summary: "uh oh"
I'm just passed the first 100 pages. I find the manuscript well written but should be if he attended Yale. It is his northeastern liberal slant that started shining right away in the intro. This slant picked up momentum and at times seemed more like opportunistic rants.
I finished the book finally and my assessment is even more critical. He takes every opportunity to bash southerners with his stereotypical desciptors. Ater prolonged exposure to this it is evident to me that many people would find the book polarizing to say the least. This seems commonplace at this time in our history. The only good thing to come out of reading this for me was I checked it out at the library instead of paying money for it. I'm relieved at that.
Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-05-24
Summary: "Well written, compelling, but pointedly partisan"
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.
Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-05-11
Summary: "Compelling History Written with a Particular Point-of-View"
Texas Tough by Richard Perkinson is a revisionist history the Texas prison system and indictment of its conditions. Perkinson argues the development of the modern prison system is inherently tied to the demise of slavery. Precisely how a reader feels about revisionist histories will likely determine whether he or she even finishes the book -- which is a shame, because despite its flaws, this is a book worth reading.
Perkinson begins with the story of the beginnings of the penitentiary in New York and Quaker Pennsylvania before narrowing his focus to the American South -- specifically Texas -- its racial tensions, and its prison systems. The book ends with a rather dreary assessment of modern-day prisons.
The book is written by an academic. The extensive endnotes make this clear. However, with only a few exceptions, Perkinson avoids the language and terminology of academia that can sometimes obscure similar works. There's a massive amount of information, but it's presented in a logical and cohesive way.
Texas Tough is not a perfect book, though. Perkinson has a point of view, and he does an excellent job of presenting it. However, there is no serious attempt to present any other viewpoint. It is this issue that will alienate readers for whom "revisionism" is a dirty word. This one-sided argument, no matter how compelling, suffers from a lack of credibility, since the reader can't compare the new information with the existing material. One very minor example near the beginning: Perkinson portrays Benjamin Rush dismissively as a hack, although historically, he's known for much more than bloodletting and having an insane child. This example is minor, but stood out for me. It, unfortunately, made me wary of what else the author glossed over.
I wish the author had been more even-handed, although perhaps it would have expanded the book to be too large to be marketable. Perkinson's essential argument seems convincing, but without reading outside sources, I'm withholding final judgment. I also wish Perkinson might have tempered the depressing tenor of the book with some potential solution for ills of the prison system. However, I understand he is a historian, not a social scientist and don't hold this against the book.
Despite my reservations, I'd recommend this book for anyone interested in civil rights, the prison system and prison history. Less confidently, I'd encourage those who enjoy reading about the American South or Texas history in general to pick it up. It illuminates an alternative perspective, which should be taken with a grain of salt, but should also be taken seriously.
(This book was received and reviewed through Librarything's Early Reviewer program)
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-05-05
Summary: "TEXAS TOUGH indeed"
In TEXAS TOUGH Parkinson presents a well-researched history of the rise of Americas Prison Empire. This book was assigned in my graduate level class on American Punishment. This is a well-written journey though Texas and US history that brings together the past and present of how the juggernaut of corrections that we have in the US today was created. He grapples issues of race and how they are deeply intertwined historically with our criminal justice system. The stories of the conditions and experiences in these prisons were haunting. I highly enjoyed this book and recommend it for a class or just a good read.