Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World by Baz Dreisinger
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Just completed reading INCARCERATION NATIONS, a book of non-fiction that takes the reader on a journey to justice in the prisons around the world. This book is a must read; I have leaned more from Baz Dreisinger's compact exploration of the prisons in the US, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Jamaica, Brazil, Australia, Singapore and Norway than anything I have ever read or viewed before. The upshot? What we are doing in prisons does not work, has not worked and we are building, sometimes, a criminal system from within. The author explores what can be made right with equal parts empathy and intellect, and she also highlights the positives that is happening with prisons, particularly in a country like Norway and even Singapore, where the focus is on reentry into society. After all, if you don't want to keep building a nation of criminals, how do you begin? Dreisinger is herself the founder and academic director of the Prison-to-College Pipeline program, which offers credit-bearing college courses and reentry planning to incarcerated men. Clearly, the criminal justice system has to do something better, since what we are doing now just isn't working!

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