About the Author

Norval Morris is the Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Criminology at the University of Chicago. His numerous books include The Brothel Boy and Other Parables of the Law and Between Prison and Probation.

David J. Rothman is Professor of History, Bernard Schoenberg Professor of Social Medicine, and Director of the Center for the Study of Society and Medicine at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is the author of The Discovery of the Asylum, Conscience and Convenience, and Strangers at the Bedside.

Reviews

timely collection of essays on the long, grim history of the prison ... The value of the collection is that it constantly makes one think why ... was 'the impulse to do good' channelled into 'creating something as strange as a prison'? Paul Barker, The Observer a most challenging and disturbing book ... the book meticulously evidences the failure of mass imprisonment to deliver a minimum quality of civilised human existence ... It shows the historical continuity of injustice and absurdity in any mass system. Bill Forsythe, New Statesman & Society

timely collection of essays on the long, grim history of the prison ... The value of the collection is that it constantly makes one think why ... was 'the impulse to do good' channelled into 'creating something as strange as a prison'? Paul Barker, The Observer a most challenging and disturbing book ... the book meticulously evidences the failure of mass imprisonment to deliver a minimum quality of civilised human existence ... It shows the historical continuity of injustice and absurdity in any mass system. Bill Forsythe, New Statesman & Society