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As a white Jewish English professor who focuses on
African-American cultural studies and is passionate about
working with about-to-be-released prisoners, Baz Dreisinger
says she’s used to surprising people. Her “peculiar blend of
identities” is unique – and so was her idea of a two-year
journey to visit prisons around the world.
The statistics that spurred her are “devastating:” More than
two million people are behind bars in America, making the
U.S. the “world’s largest jailer.” There are more African
Americans in jail today than were enslaved 166 years ago;
one in 14 black men is incarcerated in the States. American
prisons hold 160,000 “lifers,” as compared to fewer than
sixty lifers in Australia.
America’s prison model, says Dreisinger, is exported around
the world. But the world, as she discovered, altered those
plans.
In Rwanda, where violence between Hutus and Tutsis horrified
us a generation ago, she discovered that bribery and
corruption are “rampant” but prison programs bring criminals
and victims together to attempt forgiveness.
In South Africa, in the prison where Nelson Mandela was
held, she learned that apologies are nice, but a phone call
to a prisoner’s mother does even more.
In Uganda, where overcrowding leads to horrific conditions
and corruption is “endemic,” she learns that prisoners are
hungry for beauty in words. In Thailand, she toured women’s
prisons where guards are required to know women by their
names and faces, not their numbers. She visited Australia,
which began as a penal colony; Singapore, a “Disneyland with
a death penalty” and an exciting reentry program; and
Norway, where prisoners can “spend up to half” their
sentences off-premises.
When Incarceration Nations first crossed my desk, I
expected to read horror story after horror story but,
surprisingly, that’s not at all what I got. Instead, there’s
a lot in here about recidivism, reentry, and forgiveness.
While I suppose one could argue that, in the making of this
book, author Baz Dreisinger saw only what officials wanted
her to see, there’s much more to this story: Dreisinger was
nevertheless still able to draw statistical parallels
between American prisons and, say, Singapore’s, where
recidivism rates are far less than in the U.S.; or Norway’s,
where prisoners are jailed near their home communities.
Furthermore, Dreisinger uses her experiences as the founder
of the Prison-to-College Pipeline program in New York to
show how punishment is more effective if there’s a glint of
hope tied up in it.
This is not a soft-on-crime book; instead, it’s more
a meditation on making prisons more productive, instead of
merely a warehouse for individuals. And if that’s a concern
of yours, then Incarceration Nations is truly worth
your time.
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