By Bill Keller, New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2023 

Reviewed by Pam Gates

Everyone should read this book. And I do mean everyone, at least every American. It’s short (159 pages, including footnotes), it’s concise, and it tells in a nutshell what the purpose of prison should be. And most American prisons fall far short, Keller says. We in MOSES agree with him, I’m sure, but if we could get everyone to read this book, maybe America could make real progress on the problems we have created or exacerbated by locking up so many, and especially for so long – which includes the often lengthy post-prison monitoring, where people are “locked up on the outside.”

Bill Keller is a Pulitzer Prize winner and founding editor-in-chief of the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers U.S. criminal-legal systems. (Systems, plural, because there are hundreds in this country. “If you’ve seen one prison, you’ve seen one prison,” Keller says.) But almost all of these systems are reflected in this quotation from two French observers of the American penitentiary system, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont, in 1833 – almost two centuries ago: “While society in the United States gives the example of the most extended liberty, the prisons of the same country offer the spectacle of the most complete despotism.” Keller introduces this book with that observation.  

Keller himself starts out with some pretty damning statistics. Per 100,000 population, he writes in his introduction, “our incarceration rate is is roughly twice Russia’s and Iran’s, four times that of Mexico’s, five times England’s, six times Canada’s, nine times Germany’s, and seventeen times Japan’s.” His premise: The “American way of incarceration is a shameful waste of lives and money, feeding a pathological cycle of poverty, community dysfunction, poverty, and hopelessness.” He believes that we can change this, and with the rest of the book shows us why and how. 

We could start by imitating Norway or Germany. Those countries treat prison residents with respect; they consider loss of freedom the only punishment necessary and otherwise work to prepare residents for the freedom they will one day regain. There is a reasonable proportion of guards to residents, way different from the average U.S. ratio of roughly 21 prison residents per guard. Guards are treated with respect in other ways. Interaction between residents and guards is encouraged; playing cards, etc., with each other is encouraged. The whole arrangement is light years away from how it is in American prisons. (In fact, Keller’s last chapter is titled “The Other Prisoners,” namely, those who work as guards.) The head of the North Dakota prison system undertook in 2015 to imitate the European model just touched on. It took some adjusting, but it worked! Guards were doubtful at first, but most slowly adjusted to being a respected part of a team with the positive goal of helping those imprisoned regain a place in society.

“In the U.S.,” Keller writes, “prison work ranks near the bottom of law enforcement. The stress of the job leaves a wake of divorce, alcoholism, PTSD, and suicide. Recruitment and retention are constant problems.” But in Germany, he writes, corrections jobs are in great demand, and only about 10% of applicants make it into the training program, which is an intensive two years, in contrast with the American average of a few weeks.

Cost is another dismal aspect of our system. There are, of course, the brick-and-mortar costs, plus the costs of feeding, housing, and otherwise maintaining prisoners. And there are social costs. In 2016, a team at Washington University, in St. Louis, attempted to put a monetary figure on the “social costs” of incarceration. They estimated lost wages, costs of visitation, higher mortality rates, child welfare payments, eviction and relocation costs, divorces, lowered property values, and the increased criminality of children of incarcerated parents. Their results? $1 trillion per year, $450,000 per incarcerated person!

Other chapters in this book address race and the prison system, life after prison, women in prison, college in prison, preparing prisoners for a return to normal life, the science of crime and punishment, and how being in an American prison is like being in an “upside down kingdom” (that chapter’s title). Each chapter is short, concise, and written in an interesting, lively fashion.

Our culture of fear pushes prosecutors to send people to prison, and it is that fear, perhaps, that needs addressing more than anything else. It’s used by politicians and the media to mistreat a portion of our population and dehumanize them, encouraging a culture of “them” and “us.” A personal observation: My niece, who grew up out West in a largely white society, found this book at my house, read it, and got busy trying out Keller’s ideas on random people she encountered in her daily life. She got very positive responses. It appears that there is hope! 

A statement by U.S. Sen. Cory Booker appears at the beginning of this book and sums up its value well: “America’s unjust system of mass incarceration tears families apart, costs taxpayers billions of dollars each year, and doesn’t make our communities any safer. Bill Keller … powerfully argues that America can and must do better. To do nothing or say nothing only reinforces the current nightmare. I hope you read this book, learn, and in some way, join the growing bipartisan efforts to bring about urgently needed change.”

Amen.