Taylor Pendergrass

This was a hard book to finish, not because of the writing but because of the subject matter.

It was hard for me to hear how sadistic some guards are, how little rehabilitation there is for people once they are in the system. With the millions of dollars being spent, we have accomplished nothing.
Is this any way to treat people? Even if, as it sometimes sounds like, they haven't yet taken responsibility for their choices/actions? How much choice odes a person seel they have if they are treated worse than dirt all their lives? If they are considered guilty just for their skin color?… (lisätietoja)

I embarked on the journey of reading Six by Ten, edited by Taylor Pendergast and Mateo Hoke, after reading American Prisons, which is a book that recently opened my eyes to the horro that is our “justice system”. I saw this book in the publisher’s website, Haymarket Books, after looking up books on the prison system in America. This books focuses on solitary confinement and is told through thirteen different people’s personal accounts of being imprisoned. This book will break your heart. I am heartbroken. I am unable to convey just how unproductive and inhuman solitary confinement is, and how crooked our justice system is today, and likely always has been. These thirteen people will make you think, and will open your mind to the human experience. These are humans, as we all are, despite their crimes. I know for most people that once a person commits a crime they are not worthy of fairness. This is simply not true. These prisoners and peisoner’s family members are indeed worthy of the ripe of justice that would enable them to heal and become reformed. Being locked up in a six by ten cell and treated like an animal is not the answer. Albiet I don’t have the answers ready at the moment I do know that after meeting these people through their narratives that I am forever changed. The stories are raw and effective that are told in this complilation.… (lisätietoja)