The book relies on imprisonment rates, official crime statistics, and studies of criminal justice reform and on an ethnographic study of male prisoners. Going inside prisons, the authors examine the types of people in prison and look at the social effects of imprisonment on inmates. They note that the imprisonment rate in the United States is higher than any other country in the world and contend that inmates leave prisons in socially crippled and profoundly alienated conditions. In addition, the authors believe that prison overcrowding will be significantly reduced by substantially shortening prison terms and that public safety will not be sacrificed as a result. The correctional industrial complex is discussed, and consideration is given to imprisonment costs, public misperceptions about who goes to prison, national prison admission trends, crime patterns, habitual offenders, prison types, parole, crime reduction, and social costs of imprisonment. Notes, tables, and figures