An indispensable work that features essential information about federal prisons.
An ambitious guide examines the federal prison system.
This book’s subtitle is deadly serious and thoroughly warranted. From the outset, Zoukis (Prison Education Guide, 2016, etc.) mounts a convincing case regarding mass incarceration and the changing demands of prison populations, thereby underscoring the need for this project. The author has been an inmate since 2006 and provides an insider’s view often missing from discussions of the federal prison system. The helpful italicized tips that appear frequently throughout the text are based on considerable experience, observation, and research. But the most sustained first-person account lies in the chapter devoted to the heightened restrictions and indignities of the Special Housing Unit. Zoukis tackles a wide array of challenging issues, such as communicable diseases, mental health, suicide, substance abuse, violence, gangs, and sexual assaults. The densest chapter focuses on the Inmate Discipline Program, examining incidents that occur on the inside. As he does consistently throughout the book, Zoukis breaks down the bureaucracy, explains the processes involved, and offers advice—in this case, how best to represent and defend oneself, whether innocent or guilty of the charges. Beyond the handbook’s obvious appeal to future and current inmates, the author correctly asserts that it is also useful for friends and family, legal professionals, prison staff, and students of the criminal justice system. For example, in addition to a separate chapter on visitation procedures that should greatly benefit loved ones, Zoukis suggests that, in the event of an emergency on the outside, friends and family members should communicate directly with the chaplaincy staff, request a return call from the inmate within 24 hours, and repeat this procedure if necessary. Given that the stated goal of the prison system is rehabilitation, the author presents the advantages and disadvantages of different work assignments as well as the opportunities available for education, entertainment, recreation, religious services, and legal research. Zoukis manages to compile, organize, and annotate an astonishing amount of data in a way that should satisfy all readers. At the end of this impressive manual, he directly addresses new inmates: “As you stand at that prison gate awaiting entry into a culture to which no one wants admission, what choice will you make? Will you choose success or failure?” This comprehensive handbook goes a long way to answering those questions.
An indispensable work that features essential information about federal prisons.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-79973-4
Page Count: 522
Publisher: Middle Street Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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