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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the Twentieth-Century United States

A Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the Twentieth-Century United States

Hillyer, Reiko

Hardcover

20th Century United States HistoryCriminologyGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 1478025875
ISBN13: 9781478025870
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: Feb 13 2024
Pages: 368
Weight: 1.45
Height: 1.10 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.30
Language: English
Throughout the twentieth century, even the harshest prison systems in the United States were rather porous. Incarcerated people were regularly released from prison for Christmas holidays; the wives of incarcerated men could visit for seventy-two hours relatively unsupervised; and governors routinely commuted the sentences of people convicted of murder. By the 1990s, these practices had become rarer as politicians and the media--in contrast to corrections officials--described the public as potential victims who required constant protection against the threat of violence. In A Wall Is Just a Wall Reiko Hillyer focuses on gubernatorial clemency, furlough, and conjugal visits to examine the origins and decline of practices that allowed incarcerated people to transcend prison boundaries. Illuminating prisoners' lived experiences as they suffered, critiqued, survived, and resisted changing penal practices, she shows that the current impermeability of the prison is a recent, uneven, and contested phenomenon. By tracking the thickening of prison walls, Hillyer historicizes changing ideas of risk, the growing bipartisan acceptance of permanent exile and fixing the convicted at the moment of their crime as a form of punishment, and prisoners' efforts to resist.

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