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BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr
James Carr spent most of his life in places like San Quentin and Soledad. He became one of the most notorious rebels in the seething California Penal System. With George Jackson he formed the Wolf Pack, the gang of black convicts joined together for survival -- and for their share of the immense wealth generated in prison through drugs, gambling, prostitution and protection.
BAD is a ruthless account of the horrors of penitentiary life -- race riots, murders, brutal punishments, official corruption -- from one who led the struggle against the authorities and lived to escape them.
BAD is a ruthless account of the horrors of penitentiary life -- race riots, murders, brutal punishments, official corruption -- from one who led the struggle against the authorities and lived to escape them.
235 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
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592 people want to read
About the author
James Carr
1 book5 followersLos Angeles-born James Carr evolved from being one of the most notorious rebels in the California penal system of the 50s and 60s to a comrade of famed Soledad Brother George Jackson fighting for prison reform and social justice. Carr was murdered April 6th, 1972 outside his home in San Jose, CA.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
April 5, 2015
I read this book years ago and it terrified me. REALLY, it scared me.
June 16, 2012
My immediate problem with this book is that it glorifies a character that glamorizes rape and sexual violence. The kind of behavior that James Carr boasts of throughout this book is exactly the kind of thing that would get any activist, anarchist, or punk exiled from an entire community.
So honestly, despite a single clever insight into the nature of crime, the ineffectiveness of the SF Black Panthers, and a generally brutal expose' of prison life, there is little value in this book. I'm actually kind of disappointed in AK for publishing it without any kind of caveat anywhere in its pages.
No apologies are made for the series of murders, assaults, and rapes that Carr commits in every chapter. He even beams with pride in an anecdote that details the brutal gang-rape of a young white male that arrives at his prison in the California mountains. Carr is seemingly given a free pass for being part of a group of 60's radicals. What this book implies is that if you are part of an important enough movement (no matter the role you played), that you are not held responsible for your actions. The free pass that Carr is given either reeks of double-standards for others in the radical community or the gross paternalism of its poor African-American protagonist.
So honestly? This might be the worst book in AK's amazing catalog.
February 23, 2020
A brutally honest work about James Carr's criminal career and prison activities. James Carr was a member of George Jackson's infamous Wolfpack, a prison gang turned to prison reform group. Murdered in 1972 by hired killers, James Carr takes an unvarnished and unapologetic look at life in prison- including his own involvement in gang rapes, shakedown rackets, race riots, and murders. He does not show remorse for his actions nor totally blame "the system" for his imprisonment. He shows no racist tendencies towards anyone, except when necessary in dealing with prison culture. While he started working with the left, he quickly became disillusioned and began to shy away. An excellent book and highly recommended.
December 8, 2012
I like the idea that books have to be about people who's actions you endorse 100% and if they don't AK Press shouldn't publish them. Sadly this seems to be the mindset of some of the "anarchist" "punk" reviewers on this site. Sad.
I loved this book; it's one of my favorites. Really I feel it's essential reading.
I loved this book; it's one of my favorites. Really I feel it's essential reading.
December 4, 2008
I read this book on a hammock in plaintive suburbs in Wisconsin. Puts you in a relaxed frame of mind for all of the prison rape anecdotes. I'm gonna go curl up into a ball now.
August 13, 2009
Amazing story of the radicalization of a pretty brutal dude who grew up in and out of prison in the 50s and 60s in California. The brutality is actually quite intense and told with an unsettling indifference, but that means he never makes himself out to be a victim. His critique of the 60s radical left and their fetishization of black prisoners is interesting too.
November 19, 2009
Prisons do not rehabilitate and are not meant to. But inadvertently they lead some to radicalism. And this is the best rehabilitation imaginable. A lot in here on George Jackson, a thorn in the side of the racial divide.
December 3, 2007
James Carr was a comrade in arms of George Jackson. This book is of interest and importance to those interested in the Black Panthers, the U.S. prison-industrial complex, and revolution.
January 25, 2009
Dark stuff. Carr was a scary motherfucker. You can't really go wrong with any of the books in this series.
June 20, 2011
An amazing look into just what the modern penal system looks like. Hard, unflinching, and scary.
October 31, 2009
I finished reading BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr not too long ago. It put me in a pensive mood. Starting with Sister of The Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha - as told to Dr. Ben Reitman, I've been working my way through (and for the most part enjoying the hell out of) The NABAT Books Series.
With BAD, James Carr was historically notable in that he co-founded The San Quentin Wolf Pack, an early prison reform movement and a predecessor to The Black Panthers. Otherwise his life would have been pointless; this autobiography is one of the few I've read by someone wholly without a conscience (William F. Buckley aside).
That he found himself a historical footnote is purely a coincidence. James Carr was a true sociopath who committed atrocious acts of violence mainly to alleviate ennui. He eventually embraced Marx and Lenin and the vague notion of "revolution" with a pedantic zeal but without having any experience in the world against which to apply those philosophies. Even his supposed redemption in marrying and fathering a child, creating a nucleus of intimacy and difference, before being gunned down was punctuated by words and actions that belied any semblance of being more than a domesticated monster. It's also worth noting that the sentences he earned that resulted in his spending the majority of his life spent in prison were, without exception, wholly justified.
In any struggle for an oppressed people to gain freedom, equality, rights, or whatnot, an important early step is expressing and moving past very real and very justified anger. But too often people — and entire movements — get mired in anger, refusing or unable to move past it to to make their voices heard and their positions respected. Too often they end up setting the cause for which they are working back. You see this in the sputtering populist rage of Tea Party types, in the smashing and burning of corporate symbols by the ultra left at G8 protests, in the impotent century-old calls for oppressed workers to arise in a Socialist revolution. None of these groups will ever see their agenda succeed until they move past focusing on anger and onto constructive change. Most likely none ever will.
That James Carr is celebrated as a hero and cultural icon is due to his life being an expression of rage against the world. And that in a way was necessary for the times in that his expression of anger, even though it didn't contain even a speck of altruism, was used by others as a catalyst, albeit vicarious, for an early stage of overcoming oppression. But based on his own words, the highest form of nonviolent emotion Carr was capable of expressing was one of prison fraternity. I doubt he had the emotional capacity to move beyond a primal stage to actually make a difference. And it's doubtful Carr could have come to any other end than one of pointless violence.
Still, the detached voice in which he unapologetically describes his life — raping, murdering, stealing, maiming — made this a captivating book, and a study of a man without emotion swept into the larger current of a movement others embodied in him and a movement I can't decide if he helped or hindered.
With BAD, James Carr was historically notable in that he co-founded The San Quentin Wolf Pack, an early prison reform movement and a predecessor to The Black Panthers. Otherwise his life would have been pointless; this autobiography is one of the few I've read by someone wholly without a conscience (William F. Buckley aside).
That he found himself a historical footnote is purely a coincidence. James Carr was a true sociopath who committed atrocious acts of violence mainly to alleviate ennui. He eventually embraced Marx and Lenin and the vague notion of "revolution" with a pedantic zeal but without having any experience in the world against which to apply those philosophies. Even his supposed redemption in marrying and fathering a child, creating a nucleus of intimacy and difference, before being gunned down was punctuated by words and actions that belied any semblance of being more than a domesticated monster. It's also worth noting that the sentences he earned that resulted in his spending the majority of his life spent in prison were, without exception, wholly justified.
In any struggle for an oppressed people to gain freedom, equality, rights, or whatnot, an important early step is expressing and moving past very real and very justified anger. But too often people — and entire movements — get mired in anger, refusing or unable to move past it to to make their voices heard and their positions respected. Too often they end up setting the cause for which they are working back. You see this in the sputtering populist rage of Tea Party types, in the smashing and burning of corporate symbols by the ultra left at G8 protests, in the impotent century-old calls for oppressed workers to arise in a Socialist revolution. None of these groups will ever see their agenda succeed until they move past focusing on anger and onto constructive change. Most likely none ever will.
That James Carr is celebrated as a hero and cultural icon is due to his life being an expression of rage against the world. And that in a way was necessary for the times in that his expression of anger, even though it didn't contain even a speck of altruism, was used by others as a catalyst, albeit vicarious, for an early stage of overcoming oppression. But based on his own words, the highest form of nonviolent emotion Carr was capable of expressing was one of prison fraternity. I doubt he had the emotional capacity to move beyond a primal stage to actually make a difference. And it's doubtful Carr could have come to any other end than one of pointless violence.
Still, the detached voice in which he unapologetically describes his life — raping, murdering, stealing, maiming — made this a captivating book, and a study of a man without emotion swept into the larger current of a movement others embodied in him and a movement I can't decide if he helped or hindered.
August 3, 2016
I read this book sometime last year, and was really surprised that a lot of friends had recommended.
(Also if you haven't read this book, there is a lot of graphic physical and sexual violence in it.)
Bad is pretty much one long story about all the fucked up things James Carr did growing up and as an adult (in and out of various boys homes, juvie and prisons the whole time). At some point the editors praise him for never saying he's sorry (something i entirely disagree with in this instance), as though any admission of having done anything wrong (which he clearly has) would be simply feeding into christian sin and guilt.
I feel like this story and any conclusion one could draw about Carr are near impossible since he was killed relatively shortly after becoming politicized and being released from jail.
Probably the most interesting twist Bad brings out is how many 60s activists simply didn't want to talk about or acknowledge what had filled the prisons to begin with other than poverty and racism. This book points out the hussling ways of more than one famous political prisoner. Sadly, Bad goes to the opposite extreme of graphically accounting all of them.
It would be one thing if copies were still floating around from it's initial, small print run, but the fact that a major radical press would republish it (especially without any acknowledgement of all the violence) is really upsetting.
(Also if you haven't read this book, there is a lot of graphic physical and sexual violence in it.)
Bad is pretty much one long story about all the fucked up things James Carr did growing up and as an adult (in and out of various boys homes, juvie and prisons the whole time). At some point the editors praise him for never saying he's sorry (something i entirely disagree with in this instance), as though any admission of having done anything wrong (which he clearly has) would be simply feeding into christian sin and guilt.
I feel like this story and any conclusion one could draw about Carr are near impossible since he was killed relatively shortly after becoming politicized and being released from jail.
Probably the most interesting twist Bad brings out is how many 60s activists simply didn't want to talk about or acknowledge what had filled the prisons to begin with other than poverty and racism. This book points out the hussling ways of more than one famous political prisoner. Sadly, Bad goes to the opposite extreme of graphically accounting all of them.
It would be one thing if copies were still floating around from it's initial, small print run, but the fact that a major radical press would republish it (especially without any acknowledgement of all the violence) is really upsetting.
May 12, 2016
I received this as a first read. This was a difficult for me to read. This not because it was written badly it is just the subject matter was hard to read. It is a very dark book. However, it was different then most things I have read. it was very interesting.
January 21, 2008
Pretty much all the book in this series are amazing.
December 8, 2008
Almost no political content. I refer back to this book to revisit his cold, light, and totally intelligent descriptions of brutality and conquest in prison in sex and on the street.
April 9, 2010
nothing makes a difference, but live the life you want to live.
July 12, 2016
I really enjoyed this book
June 6, 2022
Bad
Great read on the pre gang banging era of South Central Los Angeles, and gives insight on the left wings relationship with Black militancy.
Great read on the pre gang banging era of South Central Los Angeles, and gives insight on the left wings relationship with Black militancy.
October 3, 2020
Neither apologetic nor glorifying, just horrifyingly direct. For instance, he talked about his spending the proceeds of his robberies on clothing with anything but braggadocio. There are indications of hopefulness in Carr's emotional development, starting with self-control, ability to grieve for a friend, and so forth but more importantly there are hopeful indications of a brutal system of incarceration being transformed, led surprisingly by the inmates own transcendence of the racist divides.
If you is to believe in what one hears on Ear Hustle and elsewhere, San Quentin itself has been transformed. Even if that is the case, how much, if any progress has been made throughout the rest of the Calif. penal system, to say nothing of elsewhere in the world.
I could do without the outdated radical polemics, but Carr himself seemed done with them, even if they
I understand the length and detail of the explication of his negative behavior before the later 'transformations,' which are more summarily dealt with. The process of taping that helped Carr through a process of dealing with all the ugliness in his life. If he had had time to edit and rewrite that might have been remedied.
He was less clear about the developing understanding that he, a in an even more truncated way, George Jackson went through. But a thoughtful reading makes these quite palpable, despite the jargon.
The same for the "New Afterword" of the 2002 edition, which is slightly mired in the jargon and lack of clear directions forward during a frustrating period of New Left and Right ascendancy. I went back to re-read parts of it and got more out of it.
However, the main value of the book is its historical and heart-wrenching explication of oppressed cultures in and out of penal systems.
If you is to believe in what one hears on Ear Hustle and elsewhere, San Quentin itself has been transformed. Even if that is the case, how much, if any progress has been made throughout the rest of the Calif. penal system, to say nothing of elsewhere in the world.
I could do without the outdated radical polemics, but Carr himself seemed done with them, even if they
I understand the length and detail of the explication of his negative behavior before the later 'transformations,' which are more summarily dealt with. The process of taping that helped Carr through a process of dealing with all the ugliness in his life. If he had had time to edit and rewrite that might have been remedied.
He was less clear about the developing understanding that he, a in an even more truncated way, George Jackson went through. But a thoughtful reading makes these quite palpable, despite the jargon.
The same for the "New Afterword" of the 2002 edition, which is slightly mired in the jargon and lack of clear directions forward during a frustrating period of New Left and Right ascendancy. I went back to re-read parts of it and got more out of it.
However, the main value of the book is its historical and heart-wrenching explication of oppressed cultures in and out of penal systems.
June 6, 2025
Uncompromising and gripping look at street life and the penal system in 1950s/60s in California which led to the formation of black militant groups.
Some incredibly unsavoury events taking place in this book, sometimes perpetrated by our author. Rape, violence, murder, corruption, the whole nine yards. Carr is unequivocal about these, never victimising or absolving himself. It’s pretty brutal stuff, even the more shocking from his matter-of-fact recounting. Safe to say, the dude was brutal a scary motherfucker, however he is incisive and witty.
Read the Nabat Books reprint from AK Press, all of these are absolutely fantastic. An absolutely invaluable documentation of prison life.
Some incredibly unsavoury events taking place in this book, sometimes perpetrated by our author. Rape, violence, murder, corruption, the whole nine yards. Carr is unequivocal about these, never victimising or absolving himself. It’s pretty brutal stuff, even the more shocking from his matter-of-fact recounting. Safe to say, the dude was brutal a scary motherfucker, however he is incisive and witty.
Read the Nabat Books reprint from AK Press, all of these are absolutely fantastic. An absolutely invaluable documentation of prison life.
July 5, 2024
Read this last winter in Austin Texas in between spending days with my partner—which is a very particular way to read this book. It’s fascinating and heavy and spares no detail for better or worse. 3.5
November 25, 2020
wow.. really not an easy read but powerful and worthwhile.
February 1, 2022
Raw, rugged, and REAL.
December 4, 2022
A much neglected and important book. Carr himself was remarkable and this book should be required reading today for students at any level.
Read
July 7, 2021Trigger warning: The first part of the book--about Carr's earlier imprisonments as a youth and then in an adult prison (also as a youth)--include several descriptions of him engaging in sexual violence.
I know that this book was written in the early 1970s (before Carr's 1972 murder) so it may be unreasonable for me to expect him to critically assess the many instances of sexual assaults and gang rapes he participated in (and described with little emotion) in his later political analysis. But I wish someone (his wife or the editor who chose to reprint his memoir or someone who examines prisons at that time) had addressed that, for the first two (or more?) decades of his life, Carr was a sexual predator.
I know that this book was written in the early 1970s (before Carr's 1972 murder) so it may be unreasonable for me to expect him to critically assess the many instances of sexual assaults and gang rapes he participated in (and described with little emotion) in his later political analysis. But I wish someone (his wife or the editor who chose to reprint his memoir or someone who examines prisons at that time) had addressed that, for the first two (or more?) decades of his life, Carr was a sexual predator.
January 20, 2021
interesting and worth reading, but i don't see how one emerges on the other side of this book not feeling pretty racist, especially given the joyful, animalistic tales of kidnapping and gang raping young women.
April 1, 2008
Top shelf prison biography. Amongst other things, James Carr was the Heavyweight Powerlifting Champion of the California Prison System in the 70's.
September 23, 2014
Depraved to say the least. It would be one thing if it gave a true insight into the brutal violence discussed.. But honestly I found this book little more than disturbing and self-glorifying.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews