Jossey-Bass, Inc. Publishers This is a most discouraging book. It would be difficult to imagine a more distressing proof that, while aiming at good, human beings can and do produce unbelievably gross and horribly cruel inhumanity to others. It does not require a visit to the Holocaust Museum to come face to face with the reality that we have an undiminished capacity for evil. It needs only a open eyed visit to any prison system in the United States. It is a good thing to have a safe and stable society whose citizens can carry on their lives with minimal risk. We have chosen to build a prison system to incapacitate those who appear to be a threat to that noble goal. Originally the idea of a penitentiary was to have a place where wrongdoers could come to penitence and restore their moral quality and character. The aim was rehabilitation, not punishment. This book shows how seizing control of other human beings is an insidious corrupting posture that transforms good intentions into demonic, hellish evil. It is the power to control the prisoners that sabotages all efforts to behave in humane and rational ways. The control of others leads inevitably to a punitive stance that forces all interactions into the dead end of anger and enmity. The structural processes of prison guarantee a self-defeating system that does not protect society but exacerbates the danger and risk of violent deeds. There is little likelihood of positive changes for prisoners but rather a maddening descent into ever greater alienation and madness. If there was ever a national Catch 22 bind, this is it. Unchecked, the end can only be the destruction of our society. The author proposes actions he thinks can remedy the madness of prisons. So long as the consensus in our society is to surrender reason and humanity to gain a false conviction of decreased risk, nothing either can or will change. Benjamin Franklin is said to have opined that "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Our present justice system and the prisons which are the final end point of our pursuit of justice has us on the road to the demise of both liberty and safety. This book must be read by any reasonable citizen who has any concern beyond self. It must be read by all of those who are involved in any way in the administration of justice, the sentencing of fellow citizens to prisons, or the prostitution of the mental health professions into agents of a punitive and self-imploding society. It may not do any good. In fact, reading this book may strengthen and more deeply root those who cannot tolerate disconfirming evidence in this inhumane evil. Reviewed by Ralph Underwager, Institute for Psychological Therapies.
|
