Jennifer Wynn

The author doesn't get entirely inside Rikers, the island-jail-city adjacent to New York's LaGuardia airport, but she comes close. Wynn is a teacher and counsellor, working inside Rikers, and with former inmates in New York. For the most this is a collection of stories of inmates, how they got there, and how they (mostly fail to) re-integrate back into society. Here perhaps her book is at its weakest. We know their tales are full of lies and self-deception, and to give her credit she knows it as well. There's something terribly depressing about hearing time and again how inmates, and the city's poor, are set up to fail. The only people in the process who seem to not 'get it' are the criminals, but that supposes that you think you know what's going on, and really you don't. Just as Rikers is its own little world alongside New York, with its own set of rules and logic, so also is the world of the criminal within New York - and in fact they shade into each other. Jail becomes just another neighbourhood. To give Wynn credit she tries to make this point, and tries to get inside the strange set of relationships between civilians in prisons, Corrections Officers, and prisoners. And she notes the futility of the so called war on drugs, many years before it became acceptable to admit the truth. I'd recommend this book, even highly, but with one caution, and that is that it is not a story of 'inside', so much as a look inside. But having said that, Wynn has indeed seen more than most of us will get a chance to (or will want to), and faithfully recorded that much. If you can, read Wynn alongside a good 'authentic' account of life on the inside - such as Karpis's 'On the Rock'.… (mehr)