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Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire
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Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire Hardcover - 2010

by Robert Perkinson


From the publisher

A vivid history of America's biggest, baddest prison system and how it came to lead the nation's punitive revolution

In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. The most locked-down state in the nation has led the way in criminal justice severity, from assembly-line executions to isolation supermaxes, from prison privatization to sentencing juveniles as adults. "Texas Tough," a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became the national template.

Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, historian Robert Perkinson reveals the Southern roots of our present-day prison colossus. While conventional histories emphasize the North's rehabilitative approach, he shows how the retributive and profit-driven regime of the South ultimately triumphed. Most provocatively, he argues that just as convict leasing and segregation emerged in response to Reconstruction, so today's mass incarceration, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights.

Illuminating for the first time the origins of America's prison juggernaut, "Texas Tough" points toward a more just and humane future.

Details

  • Title Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire
  • Author Robert Perkinson
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition [ Edition: First
  • Pages 484
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Metropolitan Books, New York
  • Date 2010-03
  • Illustrated Yes
  • ISBN 9780805080698 / 0805080694
  • Weight 1.49 lbs (0.68 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.54 x 6.6 x 1.55 in (24.23 x 16.76 x 3.94 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Prisons - Texas - History, Prison administration - Texas - History
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2009014670
  • Dewey Decimal Code 365.976

About the author

Robert Perkinson is a professor of American studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His writing has appeared in "The Nation," "The Progressive," and "Boston Review," among other venues. "Texas Tough" is his first book. He lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire
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Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire

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Metropolitan books, 2010. First edition. Hardcover. Fine/fine. Fine in fine dust jacket. Hardcover. First edition. 484 pages, with index. Illustrated with photographs. Texas is the most locked-down state in the most incarcerated country in the world. This book is a sweeping tour of southern justice, from slavery to the present, and explains how this punishment colossus came into being and how a plantation-based penal system (once dismissed as barbaric) became a template for a nation.
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Texas Tough; The Rise of America's Prison Empire

Texas Tough; The Rise of America's Prison Empire

by Perkinson, Robert

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt and Company, 2010. Hardcover. 484p., illustrated with b&w period and contemporary photographs, hardbound first edition in white boards titled black and decorated dust jacket. Faintest edgewear to dj, textpaper faintly toned (from aging, not mishandling), in almost as-new condition: entirely sound, clean and unmarked.
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