An inspiring read by one who has traveled the dark places in our world that are our prisons. Throughout the book, Ms. Dreisinger does illustrate that even in these dark places, the light of human ingenuity is alive and well and faith plays a major part of that. I volunteer with Our Children's Place at Coastal Horizons ([...]) as an Advisory Board member whose purpose is to educate the public on the invisible victims of crime, the children of those incarcerated. This book is a breath of fresh air and a clarion call for all of society to re-examine the wholesale warehousing of men and women. While some are indeed a threat to themselves and others, so many others languish within prison walls who are no real threat and other options must be sought.
Beginning in Africa and ending in Europe, Incarceration Nations is a first-person odyssey through the prison systems of the world. Professor, journalist, and founder of the Prison-to-College-Pipeline program, Dreisinger looks into the human stories of incarcerated men and women and those who imprison them, creating a jarring, poignant view of a world to which most are denied access, and a rethinking of one of America's most far-reaching global exports: the modern prison complex.
From serving as a restorative justice facilitator in a notorious South African prison and working with genocide survivors in Rwanda, to launching a creative writing class in an overcrowded Ugandan prison and coordinating a drama workshop for women prisoners in Thailand, Dreisinger examines the world behind bars with equal parts empathy and intellect. She journeys to Jamaica to visit a prison music program, to Singapore to learn about approaches to prisoner reentry, to Australia to grapple with the bottom line of private prisons, to a federal supermax in Brazil to confront the horrors of solitary confinement, and finally to the so-called model prisons of Norway. Incarceration Nations concludes with climactic lessons about the past, present, and future of justice.
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