The Factory Owner The Convict

William E. Correll (Life Treatment Center) "This book describes the way alcoholics actually think better than anything I have ever read." The world of the good old-timers of the early Alcoholics Anonymous movement comes alive in this book. It tells the interlocking stories of seven people from diverse backgrounds--men, women, black, white, wealthy, poor--who lived and taught the A.A. program with such clarity and spiritual depth, that people came from miles away to sit at their feet and be taught by them. This account was originally written for the local intergroups, to tell how A.A. began during the 1940's and 50's in the cities and towns along the St. Joseph river, as it wound its way through Indiana and Michigan to empty into the Great Lakes. But then all across the country, people struggling with alcoholism and addiction began asking for copies, and psychotherapists and counselors too. It spoke to the heart, they said. It made the twelve step program come alive and showed how it really worked. And above all, they reported, they had found that the words of these men and women were filled with a kind of spiritual wisdom and deep compassion which had the power to heal the soul. So this new edition of The Factory Owner & the Convict has now been prepared, with the last half now printed as a separate volume entitled The St. Louis Gambler & the Railroad Man.

William E. Correll (Life Treatment Center) 'This book describes the way alcoholics actually think better than anything I have ever read." The world of the good old-timers of the early Alcoholics Anonymous movement comes alive in this book. It tells the interlocking stories of seven people from diverse backgrounds-men, women, black, white, wealthy, poor-who lived and taught the A.A. program with such clarity and spiritual depth, that people came from miles away to sit at their feet and be taught by them. This account was originally written for the local intergroups, to tell how A.A. began during the 1940's and 50's in the cities and towns along the St. Joseph river, as it wound its way through Indiana and Michigan to empty into the Great Lakes. But then all across the country, people struggling with alcoholism and addiction began asking for copies, and psychotherapists and counselors too. It spoke to the heart, they said. It made the twelve step program come alive and showed how it really worked. And above all, they reported, they had found that the words of these men and women were filled with a kind of spiritual wisdom and deep compassion which had the power to heal the soul. So this new edition of "The Factory Owner & the Convict" has now been prepared, with the last half now printed as a separate volume entitled "The St. Louis Gambler & the Railroad Man."

In the 1950's, Bobby Dellelo was sentenced to the notorious Lyman School for Boys reform school, a place where children were forced into gladiator-like combat on the weekends to amuse the guards. The winner got a candy bar. Child prisoners preyed on other child prisoners and the guards abused them all. He was only 13 years old.Unbeknownst to him, he had secured a place on an assembly line that all but pre-determined his future. By age 18 he was in maximum security at Walpole State Prison, and by age 22 he was serving life without the possibility of parole. Over the course of 40 years in prison, Dellelo escaped three different times, rose to the top of the prison hierarchy, became the prisoner's union president, and was one of the architects behind the prison uprising in the 1970's. He won his freedom in 2003 by writing his own appeal.Dellelo's story is not just the story of one prisoner, but rather, the story of an industry whose success is dependent upon the continued failure of more than two million Americans. It is the story of an industry that built an assembly line that takes 13-year-old boys and transforms them into violent, habitual offenders, leaving both them and society as a whole to deal with the consequences of their dangerous product. Bobby Dellelo's life experience is the story of that process. It is the story of The Factory.

This new edition of The Prison and the Factory, a classic work on radical criminology, includes two new, long essays from the authors and a foreword from Professor Jonathan Simon (UC Berkeley). In the two essays, Melossi and Pavarini reflect on the origins, development and fortune of The Prison and the Factory in relation to the debates surrounding mass incarceration that have taken place since this book was first published 40 years ago. The reputation of the original work has long been established worldwide, and this updated version will be of very special interest to scholars of the criminal justice system, penology, and Marxist theory. This seminal book examines the links between the development of capitalist political economy and changing forms of social control. Melossi and Pavarini analyse the connection between the creation of penal institutions and regimes in Europe and the USA, and the problems generated by the emergence of capitalist social relations. They provide a thorough neo-Marxist view of emergent capitalism and the penal mechanisms which are constructed to deal with the problem of labour. Contemporary to but independent from the work of Michel Foucault, Melossi and Pavarini combine research on the development of penal philosophies and institutions with a rigorous account of changing forms of capital accumulation, focusing on the use, and the problem, of labour under capitalist relations.

Who is this man? Josu is locked up in Shalem State Prison, a maximum-security institution. He had never attracted much attention to himself before, and was content to just "do his own time." But then something happened to him; and now, he's on a mission to share it. "Man, I ain't never heard nothin' like this guy!" exclaims Jamal, one of the twelve prisoners that Josu has appointed to be his "Reps," and to share the Word about his message with the other prisoners. Josu freely gives of himself, praying for the healing of the many troubled people who flock to him, and telling them stories about the "New Order" that God is going to establish very soon. But the authority figures in the prison can't stand this arrogant challenger to their own power. They try to embarrass Josu publicly, and fail utterly. But then, when one of Josu's own followers offers to turn on him, betrayal and greed lead to a violent climax. Does this story sound familiar? Then come and read an all too well-known tale told in a fresh, exciting way and maybe see some things in the story that you'd never noticed before.

Competing with the likes of Detroit and Ann Arbor, Jackson won the battle to build Michigan's first state prison in 1838. During the era of the "Big House" and industrial growth, the penitentiary's on-site factories and cheap inmate labor helped Jackson become a thriving manufacturing city. In contrast to Jacktown's beautiful Greco-Roman exterior, medieval punishments, a strict code of silence, no heat, no electricity and a lack of plumbing defined life on the inside. Author Judy Gail Krasnow shares the incredible stories of life at Jacktown, replete with sadistic wardens, crafty escapees, Prohibition's Purple Gang, a chaplain who ran a brothel and influential reformers.