"What’s Prison For?" by Bill Keller is a thought-provoking examination of the American prison system. Keller explores the history, purpose, and efficacy of incarceration, challenging readers to rethink conventional views on punishment and rehabilitation. Through detailed research and personal stories, he highlights the system's failures and potential for reform. The book is compelling and accessible, providing a balanced perspective on a complex issue. It's a must-read for anyone interested in criminal justice, offering insightful commentary on how prisons could better serve society and the individuals within them.

Bill Keller succinctly explains the problem of mass incarceration in American. With clear prose and well-researched points, Keller expertly dismantles the notion that mass incarceration is simply justice at work. Due to the short length of What's Prison For, there is no extra information and each paragraph counts. Keller also argues that prisoner's primary function should be rehabilitation, which I agree with. In Europe this is extremely common, however, this system is not at all widespread within the United States. I challenge anyone who reads this book not to feel sickened by its content; I would recommend this to anyone interested in learning more about the state of criminal justice in America, especially people who are just getting into this topic as this is a short book with immense amounts of good information packed into it.

Criminal justice reform gets a boost with this book by Keller. He covers a little history, criminal justice in other countries (Norway in particular), and attempts at reform here in the United States. He sources previous works from books, research papers and dissertations, news articles, and stakeholder testimonials from all sides of the issue. The latter group includes policy makers, corrections officials, educators, journalists, and current and formerly incarcerated people.

Four and a half stars. Overall, Keller’s book points to a necessary shift in the criminal justice system in particular and in our society as a whole. To quote Nelson Mandela, “It is said that no-one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but is lowest ones.” My sincere thanks to publisher Columbia Global Reports and the author via Netgalley. This honest review is offered freely.

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I have found myself recently becoming more and more interested in the prison reformation and abolition movements, so when I saw this book, I was immediately intrigued.

This book, while short, is a powerful exploration of what happens within the walls of America's mass incarceration. From rehabilitation opportunities, to college courses, to programs supporting imprisoned pregnant women, this book examines these band aid policies that try and staunch the failure of the American prison system.

After a couple chapters that illustrate how Norway builds and runs their prisons, with a focus on rehabilitation and reintroducction to society, it's hard to read about how badly the US's system is doing; violence within the system, the lack of support for parolees, mass incarceration of predominantly minority populations.

This felt like a very introductory sort of text. Nothing is really gone into with as much depth as it deserves but the outline is given. So it's good that this book provides an in depth list at the end of more books if someone is interested in pursuing more knowledge of this subject.

Many thanks to Columbia Global Reports and NetGalley for this ARC.

This book provided a great overview of our prison system with arguments for against different models presented.

This is an absolutely phenomenal read. What's Prison for really did ask the hard hitting question of why we put people in prison and what we could change in our prison system to stop people reoffending. Having studied criminology at university, the concept of abolishing prisons as they currently stand and creating a reform system instead is something I am definitely interested in, and this book completely reinforced this for me. Centred on the American Penal system, which incarcerates the highest percentage of the population of those countries that release statistics, it was a really interesting read from the perspectives of academics, prison officers and released prisoners. The scandavian countries are often used as a basis for what prison could look like, and I do believe their method is the aim. However, Norway also has a society that buys into the ideas alongside a very small prison population.

If you have any interest in crime and prisons pick this book up. In only 160 pages it really shows what we should be doing to reduce crime rates and support those who feel the need to commit crimes.

I have taken classes on the prison system before, but this book updated some information that I learned several years ago and included some anecdotes from people who have served, which offered a humanizing aspect to the book. It was a great refresher of everything that is wrong with our prison system.

The author did a great job of highlighting why our prisons need to focus on rehabilitation. The author's writing style was easy to read and he supported his argument with fact.

3.5/5

This book is a solid overview of some of the issues facing the incarceration system in the United States. The primary focus is the lack of rehabilitative access for those spending time in prison. The book benefitted from the well-researched and thorough descriptions of programs around the world and the country where some of these issues are successfully being addressed. I did appreciate the discussions about how COVID-19 has impacted rehabilitative programs in prisons, as well as general effects on prison safety arising from the pandemic. Overall, this book is a strong work of journalism that can be used as a good introduction to a series of incredibly complex problems.

I did feel that this book failed to hit some topics within the narrow scope of the project. In particular, the book largely glossed over the stigma of a criminal record. It mentioned "ban the box" and had a few specific anecdotes about housing issues, but may have benefitted from a stronger section about how these issues then lead to incarceration. In other words, more discussion about the cycle of incarceration could have been helpful to readers. Additionally, the book touched on several parts of prison life that could give people trauma but did not fully explain what trauma means for people either while still in prison or once released. These are a few things that came to my mind while reading.

I'd definitely recommend this book to someone looking for an easily understandable first reading about American mass incarceration.

...[D]ecades of studies identify four main conditions that foretell violent behavior: shame, isolation, exposure to violence, and a diminished ability to meet one's economic needs. ...Those are defining characteristics of life in American prison. p30

WHAT'S PRISON FOR? is very well done, but it's a difficult read. It's short, precise, and brilliantly researched, but I needed over a month to finish it. That's because it's dense in the way that I felt in my own chest.

No matter where one comes down on the issues of mass incarceration in the US and the political maneuvers throughout US history that have fueled and funded it, it's not likely you can consider the information included in this book without feeling empathy for the prisoners, the guards, their families, even administrators tasked with meeting ever conflicting demands.

One of Keller's primary purposes for WHAT'S PRISON FOR? is to argue that inmate rehabilitation should be prison's primary function. To support his idea, Keller provides ample evidence through reports from European prison models and special programs run in sections of US prisons. In these kinds of programs--which include therapy, addiction treatment, parenting classes, education like GED and college prep programs as well as college courses--prisoners can find ways to change their *behaviors* and *belief patterns,* instead of reentering society "...so accustomed to being compliant that they had lost the ability to make elementary choices--how to organize your day, let alone your life" p69.

Keller does an excellent job of presenting this difficult subject from a number of perspectives, while always keeping in view his all important goal of relieving the existing hardships of the most overlooked and disenfranchised population in the US: convicted prisoners. This requires both extraordinary delicacy and careful and thorough research, which make this book both readable and fascinating, if not necessarily a page-turner.

Thank you Netgalley for my ARC.

Trigger warnings below.

Rating 4.5 stars, rounded up
Finished August 2022
Recommended for fans of journalistic nonfiction, progressive themes, social justice themes
Triggers: prison, jail, arrest, police and guards, and mention of the following: violence, SA, physical and emotional abuse, alcohol and drugs, child abuse and neglect, I couldn't list them all probably

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This is a short and to the point view of our mass incarceration problem in America. It was really impressive because it has very recent information, not statistics that are already old by the time they’re published.

This is an important topic, especially at a moment when one side of the political aisle actually believes there is an under-incarceration problem.

We don’t give people who are struggling many options here. People with mental health problems or those suffering from addiction are thrown in the clink, the same as someone who’s committed a violent crime.

This takes you through the history of incarceration. What it was meant to be and what it’s become through fear-mongering politicians and overcrowding, in part due to lack of access to adequate legal representation.

It’s always wild to me hearing a prosecutor brag about their “flawless” record, knowing it means they’ve locked up some innocents and that we pay them with our tax dollars to convict us of crimes they can’t reasonably think we committed.

Many are tricked into accepting bad deals from the fear of prosecutorial bullying and biases of juries. There is a lot of information in a small package here.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read and review.

As someone who has read a lot about the prison crisis, I found this book laid out the recent history of the system in a very digestible way that would be very useful if someone had never read about the copy before. It did a good job at including more recent data and speaking to individuals who had been in the system

Bill Keller used to be the Executive Editor of the New York Times who is now the editor-in-chief for the Marshall Project and he has produced a book about prisons and incarceration in America but almost all of his sources are newspaper article which all most aways only "click bait" and thus very often incomplete and/or incorrect. Save your time and money and try a different book like "Locking Up Our Own" which won a pulitzer prize in 2017.

Bill Keller gives a shocking look at prison and what the prison system really is. He expertly discusses the issue of mass incarceration and why it’s as prevalent in America as it currently is. It talks about all of the factors that create the system, focusing strongly on systemic racism. It talks of the social order of prison and how race is crucial to everything. It explains the current system and it’s methods of dehumanizing and punishing without reform. A truly shocking look at something going on right in front of us. Books have been written on this topic but Keller uses enough detail to make even skeptics see how wrong things are. What can we do to change this systemic problem

A sincere thank you to NetGalley and Columbia Global Reports for providing me an advanced copy of “What's Prison For?” in exchange for an honest review. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to read this story and leave my review voluntarily.

This book thoroughly examines the prison system in the United States and provides a brief history of their functioning and history. As someone who works within the criminal justice system, it was interesting to read Keller's take on why people are incarcerated and his questioning of the efficacy of prisons. Although I feel very knowledgeable about the prison and mass incarceration system in the US, I still learned something new.

One of the most interesting points was his comparison of other country's prisons and how those rehabilitative practices could and should be applied to the US system.

What’s Prison For by Bob Keller, it’s a discussion and text about what is the point of prisons and what do we hope to gain by locking people up? I was happy to see that Mr. Keller put all opinions in this book and although I think it was a parent which side of the lane he stood, Both sides were represented. Although I didn’t agree with most of the opinions I do realize that getting a detention system that works is a very delicate dance. We can’t make them too comfortable and enjoyable because then people will be getting arrested just a nice place to live and food to eat, but then again most of the people in prison deserve another chance in these mandatory senators is a cookie-cutter policy that isn’t working. I also think private prisons are ridiculous people invest money to make money and they make money off the backs of humans to me that is a form of slavery. It’s a throwback to the Jim Crow days when white and black men were arrested to make chain gangs to make money for wealthy businessman. I want to say that I know according to the race charts the prisoners are mostly brown and black and I think that is a side effect of a bigger problem. It stems from stereotyping and how people think about the world around them. If you think the world is only as big as a street you live on you’re going to live accordingly, but I think if you get to see the world has a bigger place your whole attitude changes. I also think if we could catch children with their very young and not focus on our differences but the things we have in common no sympathy and empathy would grow. We fear the unknown and embrace The familiar. I think it is child abuse when you teach a child to hate when you neglect them they have to come up with opinions on their own. OK… I’m going to step down from my soapbox I apologize. I think this book is worth reading it should be mandatory for college students. I was given this book by Nick Galli and Bob Keller the author and I I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any errors as I am blind and dictate my review but all opinions are definitely my own.

This book is an exploration of the American prison system. It goes into a brief history of jails/prisons and how they work and function. It talks about the reasons that people are put into jail in the first place and whether or not the current system is effective at achieving any of those. It shows some positive aspects of several Europe prison systems and how those positive could be brought to the States to make out system better. It takes about how education and rehab services could help ease peoples entrance to mainstream life after they leave jail/prison. It looks at the differences between and men and womens prison/jail. It briefly dips into how Covid affected the penitentiary system. And it also talks about how the job affects the officers that work there.

I absolutely loved this book and blew through it in a day. It’s very well written and feels well researched. There are points that you are going to get angry/frustrated because it does such a good job showing how frustrating the American penitentiary system can be. It’s interesting to dip into the European systems but the book sees them with rose colored glasses. It only talks about the positives and no negatives. It does a good job of humanizing the people that it talks about. Overall I highly recommend this book for nonfiction readers and people that like reading about the penitentiary system.

as an australian with little to no understanding of the cruelty of the american prison system, this was an incredibly eye-opening read. there is some really deep expertise in this book, and one of its strengths was that the experts that it used to talk about prison reform were mostly people who had been incarcerated themselves and were now working in the area professionally. there was no shying away from the idea that the prison system needs reform, and the wide variety of viewpoints of just how far that reform needed to go, stretching all the way to abolition, was really interesting to read and learn about.

the one thing i think that was missing from this book was exploration, or even just reasons, of what the negatives of the nordic prison systems are. it was great to see examples of how prison reform internationally had worked and how passionate activists were using that, but i struggle to believe that there is a perfect system for incarceration, and am now very curious about what these flaws could be.

overall, i think this was a great entry read into understanding america's incarceration system, and learning about this from the viewpoint of how can we reform it was a really strong way to introduce me to what the underlying problems of the prison system in america are.

It is so important to keep yourself educated, especially in an age where propaganda and exaggeration reigns true. Nobody seems to reference historical fact anymore. I would truly like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me early access to this book because without it, I’m not sure I would have found it. I read this in one sitting.
Keller begins with a full historical catch-up of mass incarceration as it stands in America, giving you a journalist’s findings and evidence via history, interviews, and personal observation. It offers information regarding a variety of different thoughts throughout time regarding the best ways to deal with folks that commit crimes, heinous or otherwise. A necessary and overall intriguing read.
Seriously, give it your time; it may change your mind on a lot of fronts. I will be referencing it in the future.
Will be purchasing a physical copy to add to my shelves.