Musings Of A Dignified Prisoner Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Musings Of A Dignified Prisoner book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.
Musings of a Dignified Prisoner by Juan Rodriguez Pdf
Musings of a Dignified Prisoner is a collection of the authors' (a former correctional inmate) deepest ponderings of our Creator. Forced into isolation (jail within a jail) due to God-orchestrated circumstances, he was left alone with God, the Bible, and his own thoughts. For twenty-three hours and only one hour out of his cell for forty-five days, the author faced one major question: "Why?" He was serving the Lord doing things right and suddenly falsely accused which led him to be thrown in the "hole." The author has known many miracles and seen God work but faced by this large turn of events brings to you Musings of a Dignified Prisoner. The author's hope is that you will be exalted by the hand of God by reading this humbling experience shared. Also included is a forty-day-and-forty-night devotional to help you ponder your way into the arms of Christ.
A look at the contemporary crisis in U.S. jails with recommendations for improving and protecting the dignity of inmates Twelve million Americans go through the U.S. jail system on an annual basis. Jails, which differ significantly from prisons, are designed to house inmates for short amounts of time, and are often occupied by large populations of legally innocent people waiting for a trial. Jails often have deplorable sanitary conditions, and there are countless records of inmates being brutalized by staff and other inmates while in custody. Local municipalities use jails to institutionalize those whom they perceive to be a threat, so hundreds of thousands of inmates suffer from mental illness. People abandoned by families or lacking health insurance, or those who cannot afford bail, often cycle in and out of jails. In America’s Jails, Derek Jeffreys draws on sociology, philosophy, history, and his personal experience volunteering in jails and prisons to provide an understanding of the jail experience from the inmates’ perspective, focusing on the stigma that surrounds incarceration. Using his research at Cook County Jail, the nation’s largest single-site jail, Jeffreys attests that jail inmates possess an inherent dignity that should govern how we treat them. Ultimately, fundamental changes in the U.S. jail system are necessary and America’s Jails provides specific policy recommendations for changing its poor conditions. Highlighting the experiences of inmates themselves, America’s Jails aims to shift public perception and understanding of jail inmates to center their inherent dignity and help eliminate the stigma attached to their incarceration.
Incarcerated by the Communist regime in Yugoslavia for five arduous years, Alija Izetbegovic penned these treasured philosophical reflections on diverse topics such as freedom, politics, history, religion and morality. Confined to his cell in Foča Prison, Sarajevo, he filled thirteen notebooks with these wonderful pearls of wisdom and managed to smuggle them out with the help of a fellow inmate. These notes are now presented for the first time as part of a series. Notes from Prison is Alija Izetbegovic’s spiritual escape to freedom and makes for an outstandingly unique read, both in form and content.
Musings of a Caribbean Professor by Dion E. Phillips Pdf
Musings of a Caribbean Professor is a compilation of over 50 articles on Caribbean concerns that were previously published in newspapers across the Caribbean during the 34-year sojourn of its author while a professor of sociology at the University of the Virgin Islands. It is a treasure of information on select outstanding and lesser-known personalities, including Marcus Garvey. Such topics as China-Caribbean relations; Cuba in the Caribbean; legalization of marijuana; crime; juvenile delinquency; suicide; healthy marriages; corruption in government; Catholicism and Cuba and other pithy ones, including the popular festival of Carnival are addressed. Also, in the tenth subsection of the volume, three human-interest concerns, namely, aging, retirement as well as death and its aftermath, are addressed. Even two thought-provoking pieces entitled “Seeing Islam through Christian Eyes” and “The Mystery of Evil”, are included. As can be expected, three submissions on the military and security in Barbados/Caribbean (Dion’s research specialization) are grafted in.
Prison Transformation is the story of the changes in the New York State prison system from 1962 to 2009. Interwoven with that history is the biography of Stephen Chinlund, who lived through those big developments as an active participant in various capacities. In 1962, fourteen years before the Attica uprising, there were only twenty-two prisons in the state system. Then there were seventy-two, now sixty-six. Discipline was maintained by force, often capricious and brutal. There was only minimal education and vocational training. After growing up in New York City, going to good schools, and being ordained as an Episcopal priest, Chinlund started working inside as a volunteer. He created groups of people inside with the plan that they could help each other more effectively than he could help them by preaching or even counseling them directly himself. The groups developed into small communities inside the prisons. Chinlund also recognized the need to help the men and women after they were released and developed counseling and job training on the outside. Parole, at the time, provided none of that. With small steps, the prison system was improving, reflecting the growing consciousness of civil rights in the society at large. School opportunities were offered, and even college courses began to appear. But the progress was slow, and the discipline was still needlessly harsh. Chinlund became a consultant to the Narcotic Addiction Control Commission, helping new treatment facilities in the city get started, using his experience helping individuals who were locked up. He was then recruited, in 1968, to be the director of the Manhattan Rehabilitation Center, confining three hundred female heroin addicts. Then the uprising in Attica occurred in 1971. That tragedy led to a few more improvements: inmate grievance committees, contact visits, conjugal visits, inmate liaison committees, and some better schooling. In addition, the legislature created the Commission of Correction to be an independent monitor of the prisons. Chinlund had had success at the Manhattan Rehabilitation Center, so he moved on, in 1973, to become superintendent of the first work-release prison in New York State, giving reality to an important policy improvement. Governor Hugh Carey then asked him to become chairman of the Commission of Correction, where he was able to confirm the improvements that were being made. As important, he was able in 1979 to start the Network program, a more formal and extensive implementation of the old groups inside. Funded with federal money initially, it grew to be a force for good in twenty-six prisons, at its maximum size. Declining Careys request to serve another term, Chinlund moved on to a parish and then to be the executive director of the Episcopal Social Services, where he has continued the Network program and continued to advocate for progress in the correctional world. He continues that work after his retirement in 2005. The book tells the stories of the prisoners, staff, and politicians of those forty-eight years.
The U.S. criminal justice system is in a state of crisis, from unprecedented rates of imprisonment and recidivism to the privatization of the prison system and the disproportionate representation of particular racial, ethnic, social, and economic groups, all of which is within a larger social justice context. Catholics and Protestants have largely failed to offer vital theological responses. Amy Levad offers a Catholic perspective that directly addresses the concrete issues from a strongly interdisciplinary approach and utilizes the rich liturgical and sacramental resources of penance and Eucharist to offer a theological vision of reform.
Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot by James B. Stockdale Pdf
Thoughts on issues of character, leadership, integrity, personal and public virtue, and ethics, the selections in this volume converge around the central theme of how man can rise with dignity to prevail in the face of adversity—lessons just as valid for the challenges of present-day life as they were for the author's Vietnam experience.
Prison Ragout describes Pop's experience as a first-timer, 58 year-old, Ph.D., white guy during seventeen months of incarceration. The book portrays the other inmates, the COs and the psychological impact of the penal system. From county jail Pop is transferred to a classification center. Controlling the tier TV and fear of HIV were the major cultural factors. A medical exam confirms Pop's hypertension and a recent back operation and results in a stipulation that he is to have a bottom bunk and be given a job requiring minimum use of arms and shoulders. Upon returning to the tier the COs tears up the medical stipulation. Pop is assigned to a prison where the medical system 'runs out' of hypertension medication. Pop is given a job on the kitchen cleanup crew; work requiring lots of use of arms and shoulders. Pop changes cellmates four times. One is a "lifer" who is a "jailhouse lawyer." Another filched food from the officer's dining room (with the acquiescence of the COs) and sells it on the tier. A third played the stock market. The fourth was a racist and studying for a GED. Inmates get killed, OD, and commit suicide, but the greatest harm is caused by the inhumane environment. The book shows that violence and brutality can take subtle forms.
Despite being one of the most brilliant mathematicians in the Abbasid caliphate, Alhasan Ibn al-Haytham makes a quiet living in Basra as a scholar and copyist. He’s preparing to write a new treatise on vision and light when a strange man wearing unusual clothes kidnaps him and takes him to Cairo, for a meeting with the caliph, Al-Hakim. The “mad king” of the Fatimid caliphate wants Alhasan to utilize his brilliance to dam the mighty Nile River. What follows is the kind of adventure that the quiet, reserved Alhasan could never have imagined. Alhasan’s incredible journey will lead him to the brink of ruin – and perhaps to his most monumental discovery. A novel about one of history’s most overlooked scholars, The Prisoner of Al-Hakim is filled with vivid characters, thrilling scenes, and rich philosophical debates. It’s a story about how love, faith, and knowledge are ultimately intertwined, and tells us as much about our contemporary times as about bygone eras.
In this lively study of the development and transformation of voices of female offenders in nineteenth-century England, Anne Schwan analyzes a range of colorful sources, including crime broadsides, reform literature, prisoners' own writings about imprisonment and courtroom politics, and conventional literary texts, such as Adam Bede and The Moonstone. Not only does Schwan demonstrate strategies for interpreting ambivalent and often contradictory texts, she also provides a carefully historicized approach to the work of feminist recovery. Crossing class lines, genre boundaries, and gender roles in the effort to trace prisoners, authors, and female communities (imagined or real), Schwan brings new insight to what it means to locate feminist (or protofeminist) details, arguments, and politics. In this case, she tracks the emergence of a contested, and often contradictory, feminist consciousness, through the prism of nineteenth-century penal debates. The historical discussion is framed by reflections on contemporary debates about prisoner perspectives to illuminate continuities and differences. Convict Voices offers a sophisticated approach to interpretive questions of gender, genre, and discourse in the representation of female convicts and their voices and viewpoints.
Based on his own extraordinary life, Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram is a mesmerizing novel about a man on the run who becomes entangled within the underworld of contemporary Bombay—the basis for the Apple + TV series starring Charlie Hunnam. “It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.” An escaped convict with a false passport, Lin flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of Bombay, where he can disappear. Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter the city’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere. As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city’s poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power. Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart.
In alternating voices, Judith Wright Favor and Rosie Alfaro take the reader on a frank, frustrating, and unforgettable journey. Friending Rosie: Respect on Death Row bridges the chasm between souls consigned to life behind bars, and souls enjoying the privileges of freedom. Rosie’s letters from Central California Women’s Facility, interwoven with Judith’s reflections and questions, highlight perspectives from authors of different races, religions, and languages. Marginalized people stifle their stories when there is no one to hear, but mutual listening brings forth accounts of regret, doubt, humiliation, and grace. Some stories describe difficult encounters in prison. Family members with intimate knowledge of Rosie tell their stories. Other tales illustrate surprising parallels in the inner lives of both authors. Judith follows the friendly path of Quakers who began in the 1650s to value women’s leadership and befriend prisoners. Rosie grew up Catholic, in a faith tradition that shaped her art and values. Both write stories interwoven with social challenges and spiritual practices intended to support readers in reaching out to persons behind bars. 8-12-20: It’s yours, mine, and God’s book. I’ve been lettin people know about our book and about you. People are very interested in our story, and I know this is a start of a great journey. I’m very proud of us, friend... I wanted to tell you that to me this means nothing, but to lots of people who like crime stuff, me being the youngest and the first Latina to get the d. penalty in Calif. is a big deal. I’m personally ashamed of it, but there’s people who think it’s cool. I love you and you stay safe. Tu Amiga, Rosie Incarcerating our way to safety does not work. Friendships do work. These stories, rooted in caring and respect, offer a warmly satisfying testimony to the power of friending. *****
