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"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
List of contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: Rights, Captivity, and Disputing behind Bars
2. “Needles,” “Haystacks,” and “Dead Watchdogs”: The Prison Litigation Reform Act and the Inmate Grievance System in California
3. Naming, Blaming, and Claiming in an Uncommon Place of Law
4. Prisoners’ Counternarratives: “This Is a Prison and It’s Not Disneyland”
5. “Narcissists,” “Liars,” Process, and Paper: The Dilemmas and Solutions of Grievance Handlers
6. Administrative Consistency, Downstream Consequences, and “Knuckleheads”
7. Grievance Narratives as Frames of Meaning, Profiles of Power
8. Conclusion
Appendix A: Procedures for Interviews with Prisoners
Appendix B: Procedures for Interviews with CDCR Personnel
Appendix C: Coding the Sample of Grievances
Cases
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Kitty Calavita is Professor Emerita of Criminology, Law and Society and of Sociology at UC Irvine. Her books include Invitation to Law and Society: An Introduction to the Study of Real Law; Immigrants at the Margins: Law, Race, and Exclusion in Southern Europe; Big Money Crime: Fraud and Politics in the Savings and Loan Crisis; and Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the INS.
Valerie Jenness is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and of Sociology at UC Irvine, where she is also Dean of the School of Social Ecology. Her books include Making Hate a Crime: From Social Movement to Law Enforcement Practice; Hate Crimes: New Social Movements and the Politics of Violence; Making It Work: The Prostitutes' Rights Movement in Perspective; and Routing the Opposition: Social Movements, Public Policy, and Democracy.
Summary
Having gained access to California prisoners and corrections officials and to thousands of prisoners' written grievances and institutional responses, the authors take us inside one of the most significant, yet largely invisible, institutions in the United States.
Additional text
"An important contribution... [the authors] upend conventional wisdom on both prisons and disputing. The work should be engaged by a broad range of scholars and will hopefully serve as a foundational comparative work for future researchers."
