What do you think?
Rate this book
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 30, 2013
Mr Shaw makes himself out to be the victim. His parents abused him, although it wasn't clear how they did it. The cops abused and framed him (and some of that may be true, if you can believe him). Maybe he felt ignored by his father. However, his mother was always there to bail him out of many situations of his own causing. While in prison he seem to imply that there was only one gang, white supremacy. No mention of the black gangs, the Hispanic gangs, the gangs of Porto Rico, etc. And everyone in prison was innocent but then they all are, just ask them. I do agree with one of his themes, that drug users should not be in prison, however, I do not believe that tax payers money should be used to rehabilitate them nor should it be a mitigating circumstance in any crime the user may commit. All-in-all a very difficult book to read because of the poor, poor pitiful me attitude of the writer.
December 28, 2014
This book is pretty depressing. I can see where some types of people would be turned off by the author and his style of writing, but I think it was pretty well-written overall and provided a compelling image of the prison system of Illinois.
What I like most is the author does not make excuses for his behavior. He had a lot of garbage in his past, but he also acknowledged that that garbage did not excuse him from dealing garbage out to others and that he had to deal with the consequences of his actions from all the pain his spit back out into the world as a result of the pain he was trying to run from.
I think this book serves as a very hopeful and inspiring message of personal growth in spite of odds and how it is never too late to start fresh with yourself no matter how deeply in you are. It also serves as a pretty shocking indictment of the criminal justice system in the U.S. and how out of control certain police organizations can be as a result of the War on Drugs and not nearly enough oversight on officers doing their jobs. This is why I'm a fan of mandatory cameras for all police interactions. Psychological testing for extreme authoritarianism and sociopathic or overaggressive tendencies would also be nice.
Pretty chilling book. Not light reading, but not too difficult in content either. It will drain you emotionally and it can be pretty painful to read at times. Prison is not a pretty place. No matter what kind of punishment anyone thinks prisoners deserve, the conditions in the prisons are extremely harsh and difficult to read about.
I do recommend this to anyone willing to read it, though. What goes on in our prisons should not be invisible. We need to be aware of what we are doing and the potential side effects it can have on our communities and country.
What I like most is the author does not make excuses for his behavior. He had a lot of garbage in his past, but he also acknowledged that that garbage did not excuse him from dealing garbage out to others and that he had to deal with the consequences of his actions from all the pain his spit back out into the world as a result of the pain he was trying to run from.
I think this book serves as a very hopeful and inspiring message of personal growth in spite of odds and how it is never too late to start fresh with yourself no matter how deeply in you are. It also serves as a pretty shocking indictment of the criminal justice system in the U.S. and how out of control certain police organizations can be as a result of the War on Drugs and not nearly enough oversight on officers doing their jobs. This is why I'm a fan of mandatory cameras for all police interactions. Psychological testing for extreme authoritarianism and sociopathic or overaggressive tendencies would also be nice.
Pretty chilling book. Not light reading, but not too difficult in content either. It will drain you emotionally and it can be pretty painful to read at times. Prison is not a pretty place. No matter what kind of punishment anyone thinks prisoners deserve, the conditions in the prisons are extremely harsh and difficult to read about.
I do recommend this to anyone willing to read it, though. What goes on in our prisons should not be invisible. We need to be aware of what we are doing and the potential side effects it can have on our communities and country.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews