Incarceration Nations

October 12, 2015
Dreisinger, founder of the Prison-to-College-Pipeline program, takes readers on a “prison odyssey” across the globe in search of alternatives to the American system’s reliance on harsh sentencing, mandatory minimums, and the threat of solitary confinement. This journey begins with a powerful examination of restorative justice practices in Rwanda and South Africa, demonstrating how they shift the emphasis from punishment and retribution to reconciliation and the needs of victims. Dreisinger interrogates failures in modern penal practices, from the dehumanizing use of solitary confinement in Brazil to the overcrowding of Thai prisons filled with nonviolent drug offenders. In her storytelling she provides balanced analysis, reflecting on the limitations of reform and questioning the efficacy of well-intentioned measures such as arts programs. Her glimpses into the sociopolitical and cultural landscapes of each country provides a point for departure and comparison when examining the lessons the U.S. can learn from abroad. For example, she visits a private prison in Australia that, unlike its American counterparts, stresses intensive staff training and programs to prevent recidivism. In her travels, from Africa to Norway, Dreisinger carries out an incisive inquiry into the standards for a just society’s humane treatment of its prisoners, concluding that social inequality, racism, and capitalism lie at the root of mass incarceration in the U.S. and abroad. Agent: Sarah Levitt, Kuhn Projects.

November 15, 2015
A writer and social activist chronicles her visits to prisons around the globe to gain insight into what works and doesn't work. This anthropological examination by Dreisinger (English/John Jay Coll. of Criminal Justice, CUNY; Near Black: White to Black Passing in American Culture, 2008) wears its agenda proudly, which is not a bad thing given the level of intellectual insight and emotional struggle the author brings to her argument. Though she founded the Prison-to-College Pipeline program in 2011 to help prisoners transition successfully back into society, she still had questions. "I decided I needed a shock to the system, to unseat basic truths, to ask myself what I used to get asked all the time, before my world became overwhelmingly filled with people who shared my passions and premises," she writes. "Why care so passionately about the so-called wrongdoers of the world?" To that end, Dreisinger traversed the globe to speak with genocide survivors in Rwanda, reggae enthusiasts behind bars in Uganda and Jamaica, and imprisoned mothers in Thailand. In Brazil, the author met men broken by the savagery of solitary confinement. "Anything not to be in a cell," one prisoner said. "I will do anything to escape being so alone. All those hours. I believe in love--in love as redemption. There is no love here." Yet while she made a concerted effort to connect on a personal level, her ultimate goal was to understand the big picture. In Australia, she struggled, for example, with whether privatization of incarceration for profit can be humane. Dreisinger's refusal to offer sweeping generalizations or simple directives in the name of restorative justice is bold and as confrontational as her sessions with her students. "I'm not trying to be cryptic; the reality is that there is no pat answer to the big questions around race and crime," she writes. "Humanity is complex and contradictory; any system addressing it must be equally so." An eye-opening, damning indictment of the American prison system and the way its sins reverberate around the globe.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 1, 2015

It's difficult to address mass incarceration without talking about communities of color, especially black ones. Founder of the Prison-to-College Pipeline, Dreisinger (English, John Jay Coll.) tackles America's most noxious export: prisons.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.