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Idle Speed

A Prison Journal

I became a crook, endorsing checks made out to the stock brokerage I worked for, putting the funds in my checking account, trading heavily in stock options — always telling myself everyone would be paid off handsomely, and no one would ever know.

By Fire And Water

An Interview With Michael Meade

All this violence is a fire screaming for the water of human attention. I don’t think we’re going to be able to keep going unless we deal with it. To me the two big events of the last two years are the fires in L.A. and the flooding of the Mississippi River. I think they are strangely related.

From Yale To Jail

For no reason I can explain, I began to discover how little it matters where you are or what anyone does to you. I was sure that what I had done to get put in the hole was right, and somehow the longer I was there the better I felt.

Banana Hymn

You were ready to don the handcuffs, leg chains, and orange, ill-fitting jumpsuit required of all prisoners in transit. But you didn’t really want to go to your dad’s funeral. That’s what you’d told the man a few weeks before his bone cancer finally killed him.

Locked Doors

Chopping a door into slivers; sitting two seats back, one row over to his right; being swept up by an undertow

A Brutal Sadness

Capital Punishment And The Politics Of Vengeance

Robert Alton Harris was gassed to death at sunrise on April 21, 1992, the first person to be executed by the state of California in twenty-five years. The execution ended fourteen years of legal wrangling over Harris’s fate, capped by four overnight stays of execution.

Odyssey Of Resistance

An Interview With Daniel Berrigan

Americans don’t generally think of the consequences of war. We have grown calloused souls, with the help of a duplicitous leadership, an inert Congress, a morally cloudy church, and the jingoistic media. Add to this our historically embedded racism and you have a poisonous brew indeed, hardening hearts against thought or concern for the slaughtered innocents of Iraq.

Inside

The men here carry their personal space like body armor. They have been taught the gospel of toughness since they were young. They think it is necessary for survival to wear your strength on the outside.

The Prison Experience

The statements accompanying the photographs arose in response to a single question Camhi put to prisoners: “What do you want people to know about the prison experience?”

Prisons

Listening to the scamper of steps, the same question every fifteen seconds, the laughter of the guards