Incarceration security/Operating on the principles of isolation and confinement

I'd been involved in prison-related journalism (writing, commissioning, editing) for about a decade. But with the book, I wanted to do something larger than documenting particular flaws in the system, or ways in which it was "failing," or specific injustices. I wanted to create a broad portrait of a system that does exactly the opposite of what many people think it does, and I wanted to do that by focusing not on money or theory or statistics--though all of those things are important--but on people. I wanted to weave together the stories of many different folks and their families, showing the ways that prison breaks apart bonds and destroys lives and communities, particularly black and brown communities. And I wanted to simultaneously demonstrate that there is another way, or many other ways--that prison is not a "necessary evil," and that there are ways of being and doing that bring us closer together rather than further apart. You can't do all that in an article-length piece, and so--book!

Maya Schenwar: "Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better"