But he seeks to explain some of the worst excesses of the prisoners as rational means of survival in their caged environment. He does not condone the crimes committed outside prison. Burger's recent challenge to reform its prisons - in the spirit, it must be hoped, of Winston Churchill's earlier challenge: "The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of any country."īy such a test, America fails abysmally in the eyes of Abbott. His allegations, self-serving though they often are, ought to be part of the debate, as the United States takes up Chief Justice Warren E. His indictment of the treatment of prissoners by the authorities, and by each other, is as harsh, profane, and explicit as they come. Who could read Solzhenitsyn on the Soviet prison system and be struck by how lenientm it is? Jack Henry Abbott did - after spending most of his life since boyhood in American prisons, much of the time in solitary confinement.
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