Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:

In September 1996, fifty-three year old heroin addict Billy Ochoa was sentenced to 326 years in prison. His crime: committing $2100 worth of welfare fraud. Ochoa was sent to New Folsom supermax prison, joining thousands of other men who will spend the rest of their lives in California's teeming correctional facilities as a result of that state's tough Three Strikes law. His incarceration will cost over $20,000 a year until he dies.

Hard Time Blues weaves together the story of the growth of the American prison system over the past quarter century primarily through the story of Ochoa, a career criminal who grew up in the barrios of post-World War II L.A. Ochoa, who had a long history of non-violent crimes committed to fund his drug habit, who cycled in and out of prison since the late 1960's, is a perfect example of how perennial misfits, rather than blood-soaked violent criminals, make up the majority of America's prisoners. This is also the story of the burgeoning careers of politicians such as former California Governor Pete Wilson, who rose to power on the "crime issue." Wilson, whose grandfather was a cop murdered by drug-runners in early twentieth century Chicago, scored a stunning come-from-behind re-election victory in 1994. In so doing, he came to epitomize the 1990s tough-on-crime politician.

Award-winning journalist Sasha Abramsky uses immersion reportage to bring alive the political forces that have led America's prison and jail population to increase more than four fold in the past twenty years. Through the stories of Ochoa, Wilson, and others, he explores in devastating detail how the public has been manipulated into supporting mass incarceration during a period when crime rates have been steadily falling. Hard Time Blues deftly explores the War on Drugs, the Rockefeller Laws, the growth of the SuperMax Prisons, the climate of fear that led to laws such as Truth-in-Sentencing, and how the stunning repercussions of imprisoning two million citizens affect all of America.

In the tradition of J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground and Melissa Fay Greene's The Temple Bombing, Abramsky explores this new and dangerous fault-line in American society in a dramatic and compelling manner. From the opening courtroom scene through the final images behind the electrified fences of the nation's toughest, meanest prisons, Abramsky paints a grimly intimate portrait of the players and personalities behind this societal earthquake. Hard Time Blues combines a sense of history with a powerful narrative, to tell a story about issues and people that leads us to understand how The Land of the Free has become the world's largest prison nation.

Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation by Sasha Abramsky

From reader reviews:

Marcus Leiva:

Have you spare time to get a day? What do you do when you have considerably more or little spare time? Yes, you can choose the suitable activity for spend your time. Any person spent their very own spare time to take a go walking, shopping, or went to the particular Mall. How about open or perhaps read a book called Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation? Maybe it is to become best activity for you. You realize beside you can spend your time along with your favorite's book, you can more intelligent than before. Do you agree with their opinion or you have additional opinion?

Nathan Lawhorn:

This Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation book is not really ordinary book, you have it then the world is in your hands. The benefit you obtain by reading this book will be information inside this publication incredible fresh, you will get info which is getting deeper you actually read a lot of information you will get. This particular Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation without we realize teach the one who studying it become critical in thinking and analyzing. Don't possibly be worry Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation can bring any time you are and not make your tote space or bookshelves' turn into full because you can have it with your lovely laptop even telephone. This Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation having excellent arrangement in word and layout, so you will not truly feel uninterested in reading.

Cynthia Harvell:

Are you kind of active person, only have 10 or even 15 minute in your time to upgrading your mind ability or thinking skill possibly analytical thinking? Then you are experiencing problem with the book in comparison with can satisfy your short space of time to read it because this all time you only find reserve that need more time to be examine. Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation can be your answer as it can be read by you who have those short free time problems.

Luz Cox:

Reading a guide make you to get more knowledge from it. You can take knowledge and information from a book. Book is written or printed or descriptive from each source which filled update of news. In this modern era like right now, many ways to get information are available for a person. From media social including newspaper, magazines, science publication, encyclopedia, reference book, book and comic. You can add your understanding by that book. Are you ready to spend your spare time to spread out your book? Or just seeking the Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation when you necessary it?