Inside knowledge: Incarcerated people on the failures of the American prison By D. Larson, New York: New York University Press. 2024. pp. 301. $30.00 (hbk). ISBN: 9781479818006

Abstract

Doran Larson's new book constitutes a compelling entreaty voiced by prison residents to redress the deplorable conditions and practices of the carceral system in the United States. Larson's aim is ‘to make prison witness not only accessible but unavoidable by journalists who shape much of public debate, scholars and teachers, whose work influence thinking and practice, legal professionals, legislators, and a public that both consumes hours of skewed popular media on legal system practices and also votes’ (p.218). Writing on the inside, incarcerated people ‘mark the true first step on the path toward an authentically just criminal justice system: the recognition that the only monster contained by walls and razor wire is the prison itself’ (p.216).

His book consists of an introduction that, building on the assertion that people have the right to know how their system of justice is actually working, establishes why prison witness matters as an authentic source to counter the popular myths espoused in TV dramas and other entertainment narratives. Such first-person accounts follow the tradition of stories in which people in slavery gave the lie to southern fables of happy human chattel protected by paternal white owners. Indeed, given the disproportionate number of Blacks in detention (though the majority is still white), it is not surprising that the insidious effects of racism, a salient subtext throughout the book, punctuate the narratives of some writers.

The opening chapter describes how the espoused aims of prison since the founding of the United States have diverged from the narratives told by those experiencing prison on the inside. This account places contemporary prison writers in the context of a long and rich literary tradition. The next four chapters document how prison fails in each of its four cardinal aims, as supported by ample excerpts from contemporary writing in the American Prison Writing Archive, which Larson founded and now co-directs with political scientist, Vesla Weaver, at Johns Hopkins University (https://prisonwitness.org/). In Chapter 2, incarceration fails to dispense meaningful retribution as attested through a historical review of prison literature, including contemporary writers. In Chapter 3, we read of incarcerated people trying to achieve rehabilitation in ways often obstructed by prison practices and only rarely through prison-sanctioned programming. In Chapter 4, regarding failures of containment and incapacitation, inside writers document how the prison experience harms their ability to contribute to, and rejoin, society on the outside, and also harms their children, families and communities. In Chapter 5, deterrence is undermined by stigmatic policies and attitudes that impede even those who are no longer bent on crime from easily assimilating into legitimate work following release. Talk about an institution not only destined to fail but to ensure further social dysfunction (see also Rubin (2019) on why prisons are born to fail).

Yet his concluding chapter is hopeful, ‘laws, attitudes, and practices are changing’ (p.216), and Larson asserts the benefit of prison writing as a witness literature that can lead to criminal justice reform and a more inclusive society. Larson's mission is to achieve an authentic and restorative criminal justice system that preserves the dignity of the incarcerated, and his aspirations for the book towards this end, as explained in the concluding chapter, are to build a national Prison Witness Collective as an outgrowth of the American Prison Writing Archive, the foundation for which he laid in 2009. This Archive, fully available to the public, consists of nearly 4,000 essays from over 1,000 incarcerated writers. The Collective would consolidate the holdings of other prison witness projects and become: ‘the leading source of understanding the human experience of what incarceration and criminal legal practices do to living human beings and communities’ (p.219).

Beyond the Collective, Larson hopes to inspire academic scholars in ‘redirecting criminal legal system thinking, research, and policy recommendations’ (p.219); engage the criminal legal profession in mending their ways through training at legal clinics and redressing the amplified negative consequences victim impact statements have on sentencing; raise public awareness and understanding through prison witness literature; and promote sensible and humane legislation by engaging lawmakers and others with those affected by their policies, their families, and communities (p.229).

Larson focuses on the role of the written word to express the voice of witness. Writing, however, is but one expressive channel in a larger, multi-dimensional creative phenomenon taking place in the community of the imprisoned. Incarcerated people are employing the full range of their creative impulses to tell their stories, through art (e.g., Justice Arts Coalition (https://thejusticeartscoalition.org/)), music (e.g., Die Jim Crow (https://www.diejimcrow.com/) and Radical Reversal (https://creative-capital.org/projects/radical-reversal/)), photography and film, as well as literature, and they are finding inspiration through access to materials provided by librarians (e.g., Jail and Re-entry Services (https://sfpl.org/services/jail-and-reentry-services) and Libraries and Incarceration (https://libguides.ala.org/PrisonLibraries)). This expressive capacity must be supported in all its varied channels, and the works of such creators must be protected by copyright to impede the long tradition of appropriating the creativity of vulnerable people (Mtima, 2015; Whitman, 2024). Indeed, it was the original intent of copyright protection to promote creativity among all citizens in order to benefit society.

Larson's is an ambitious and compelling project, and his book is an extraordinary and valuable contribution both to the literature on prison writing and to the ongoing effort of activists to redress social ills caused largely by conditions of poverty. The voices he channels to the public ear should ignite far greater public attention and resources paid to rectifying the deplorable community conditions of people whose lack of life options results in incarceration to begin with. The bridge Larson builds between these efforts gives voice to the people who know best how to create the real change so desperately needed to address underserved communities, and it is incumbent on society to listen.

For those not familiar with the Book of Job in the Hebrew Old Testament, Job was a man, terribly tested by a suspicious God, and greatly suffering from His treatment. He cries out to his God grieving of his pain and anguish. According to the interpretation of a leading Episcopal clergyman, the purpose of the Book of Job is meaningful, for ‘Authentic communities acknowledge pain and innocent suffering. They don't try to avoid it or explain it away. They bear witness to suffering’ (Candler, 2018).

Similarly, Larson's current and previous books, combined with the American Prison Writing Archive, can be seen as the contemporary and collective voice of an inside Job, and the rest of us, having heard this voice – one that articulates substantive and credible ways to reform – must now act on its lead to deliver moral, authentically just and restorative, if not divine, justice.