Hard Time: Understanding and Reforming the Prison. 3rd. ed.

By Robert Johnson

From the Preface: Hard Time is a book about prisons.The focus is on men, but core concerns of women are considered as well. The book explores what I believe are basic human dimensions of prison life and adjustment, and closes with an inclusive, person-centered vision of prison reform. Firsthand testimony and observations drawn from people who live or work in prisons are highlighted and specially marked with black squares (H) throughout the book. Most of the people we send to prison are men, roughly 94 percent. Most prisoners serve time in prisons that are, as living environments if not in terms of strict classification criteria, maximum-security institutions.1 The maximum- security prison for men has served as the explicit or implicit model—the point of departure if not the template—for virtually all men’s prisons and many women's prisons as well. Life in these prisons is depriving and painful. On that score at least, prisons vary in degree, not kind. The inhabitants of every prison serve hard time. Nothing can change this basic and enduring fact. That hard time can also be constructive time is, in my view, the key to understanding and reforming the prison.

Belmont, CA. Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.2001. 356p.