Appealing to Justice

A beautifully written, compelling, and heartbreaking account of the promise and failure of the rule of law; there is no one better able to tell the story of these prisoners.-Susan S. Silbey, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Reveals both the deep tensions between legal rights and carceral control and the profound asymmetry of dispute processing in this distinctive total institution.-Robert M. Emerson, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles Dispels myths about inmate complaints while capturing surprisingly candid staff comments regarding their mission, inmate rights, and the incarcerated. A must-read.-Jeanne Woodford, Former Undersecretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation At once profoundly depressing and uplifting. Do not look for simple solutions in this book; it is filled with complicated truths.-Malcolm Feeley, Claire Sanders Clements Dean's Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley Top-rate interdisciplinary scholarship, thoughtful analysis, and smart, sensitive field study.-Doran Larson, Director of the American Prison Writing Archive and the Program in Jurisprudence, Law, and Justice Studies, Hamilton College Through engaging prose and evocative evidence, Calavita and Jenness demonstrate how the legal consciousness of prisoners and prison officials reveals and reinforces the incoherence of imprisonment.-Rosemary Gartner, Professor of Criminology, University of Toronto This compelling book provides both an illuminating account of life inside twenty-first century American prisons and a pathbreaking analysis of disputing processes in an uncommon place of law.  The authors skillfully weave together complex information from interviews and documentary sources to demonstrate powerfully that people in a repressive environment, utilizing a hollow and unresponsive formal process, can nevertheless courageously maintain an insistent rights consciousness.-George Lovell, Harry Bridges Endowed Chair in Labor Studies, Professor and Chair of Political Science, University of Washington