Synopses & Reviews
Rikers Island--just six miles from the Empire State Building--is one of the largest, most complex and expensive penal institutions in the world, yet most New Yorkers couldn't find it on a map. Like many prisons in America, Rikers performs an expert magic trick: it disappears people, keeping in those who want to get out and keeping out those who want to get in.
Jennifer Wynn has been going in for six years, first as a journalist and then as a teacher of male inmates in a unique rehabilitation program known as Fresh Start.
Wynn takes readers over the Rikers Island bridge, into the jails and back out--to the communities where her students were born and raised. She chronicles their journeys as they struggle to "go straight" and find respect in a city that fears and rejects them. Heart-warming stories of a handful of ex-offenders who have transformed their lives offer hope to a crime-weary public. Interviews with leading criminologists shed light on the motivations of inner-city offenders and why nearly 80% of Rikers inmates return to jail within a year. And Wynn describes how Rikers has been transformed in recent years from one of the world's most violent jails into one of its safest.
Capturing voices from the other side, the 11,000 correction officers who live and work in the jails, Inside Rikers shows why many guards believe that they, too, are "doing time."
Wynn has worked on Rikers Island for six years, with hundreds of inmates, and has earned the trust and respect of correction officers and officials alike. One could not ask for a better guide and more balanced account one of the most important social issues of our time.
Review
"...an unusually stirring example of the 'teacher in prison' subgenre." (Publishers Weekly)
Review
"...emotional power and political relevance..." (New York Times Book Review)
Review
a "wrenching book." (New York Observer)
Review
"A passionate and stirring book, narrated with great power and vividness of detail, and with consummate respect for those whom it portrays. A deeply humane and morally important work that ought to be required reading for our national and local civic leaders. I read it with tremendous admiration for the author's honesty and courage." (Jonathan Kozol, author of Amazing Grace and Ordinary Resurrections)
Review
"Jennifer Wynn, book-smart and street-smart, is a great guide to this island of exiles, located right under our noses and yet so invisible to most. She takes us inside Rikers and the out again, following the lives of officers and, her particular interest, prisoners. A valuable look at a place I've wondered about for years. (Ted Conover, author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing)
Review
"Narrated with great power and vividness of detail, and with consummate respect for those whom it portrays. A deeply humane and morally important work . . . I read it with tremendous admiration for the author's honesty and courage."--Jonathan Kozol, author of
Amazing Grace"Wynn takes us inside Rikers and then out again, following the lives of officers and, her particular interest, prisoners. A valuable look at a place I've wondered about for years."--Ted Conover, author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
"An astonishing and gripping account of the prison life and beyond that you have never seen or heard before."--Steven Donziger, author of The Real War on Crime
Review
"A passionate and stirring book, narrated with great power and vividness of detail, and with consummate respect for those whom it portrays. A deeply humane and morally important work that ought to be required reading for our national and local civic leaders. I read it with tremendous admiration for the author's honesty and courage."—Jonathan Kozol, author of
Amazing Grace and Ordinary Resurrections"Seeing how socioeconomic inequality, the aftershocks of lingering racism and shortsighted corrections policies play out in these men's lives gives this book emotional power and political relevance, particularly at a time when the penal system is lurching ever more toward punitive warehousing at the expense of rehabilitation . . . Wynn demonstrates, time and again, how the taint of a jail term forever dooms these men to be defined by their 'single worst deed' and to be sucked into a sadly preventable vortex of recidivism . . . [Their stories] stand as eloquent and damning testimonies to the cycle of jails and lives gone avoidably wrong and our inability to break it."—The New York Times Book Review
"Jennifer Wynn has written an insightful and moving account of the immense daily struggles faced by inmates passing through the New York City jail system. Their stories, failures, and all-too-rare successes put a human face on a population that has been largely ignored or demonized by politicians. It is an important book and a significant contribution to the literature on prisons and prisoners."—Michael Jacobson, former Commissioner, New York City Department of Correction
"Inside Rikers is an astonishing and gripping account of the prison life and beyond, one that you have never seen or heard before. Only someone of Jennifer Wynn's talent and compassion could get so many men hardened by the brutal prison experience to open up and spill their guts about the underbelly of American life. The portraits that emerge enrage, sicken, inspire, and ultimately uplift. They are life's lessons, and they are not to be missed."—Steven Donziger, editor, The Real War on Crime, and former director of the National Criminal Justice Commission
"A clearheaded, realistic examination of life inside a place about which most of us know next to nothing and probably would be hard-pressed even to imagine."—The Washington Post
"Jennifer Wynn, book-smart and street-smart, is a great guide to this island of exiles, located right under our noses and yet so invisible to most. She takes us inside Rikers and then out again, following the lives of officers and, her particular interest, prisoners. A valuable look at a place I've wondered about for years."—Ted Conover, author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
"A complex, thoughtful analysis . . . Wynn's study is ultimately a call for much-needed prison reform, with emphasis on rehabilitation rather than mere incarceration, and she makes her case well."—Kristine Huntley, Booklist
"The book clearly shows that rather than infusing communities and prisons themselves with energy and, more importantly, funding to support potentially constructive and reformative resources, American society prefers a 'make disappear' approach to criminal behavior."—Suzanne W. Wood, Library Journal
"A penetrating exploration of inmates' lives in New York's vast penal colony . . . Unusually stirring."—Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
Part memoir, part social commentary,
Inside Rikers details the author's experiences on Rikers--the largest, most expensive correctional facility in the world. Wynn offers a compelling portrait of its 18,000 inmates and how Rikers was transformed from one of the most violent jails into one of the safest.
Synopsis
Rikers Island-just six miles from the Empire State Building-is one of the largest, most complex and most expensive penal institutions in the world, yet most New Yorkers couldn't find it on a map.
Jennifer Wynn, the director of the Fresh Start program at Rikers, takes readers into the jails and then back out-to the communities where her students were born and raised. She chronicles their journeys as they struggle to "go straight" and find respect in a city that fears and rejects them.
Synopsis
Rikers Island-just six miles from the Empire State Building-is one of the largest, most complex and most expensive penal institutions in the world, yet most New Yorkers couldn't find it on a map.
Jennifer Wynn, the director of the Fresh Start program at Rikers, takes readers into the jails and then back out-to the communities where her students were born and raised. She chronicles their journeys as they struggle to "go straight" and find respect in a city that fears and rejects them.
About the Author
Jennifer Wynn is the director of the Prison Visiting Project at the Correctional Association of New York, the oldest criminal justice agency in New York City, and editor of the
Rikers Review for the Osborne Association. She has visited over thirty state prisons and interviewed hundreds of prisoners—in solitary confinement, in prison yards, and in mess halls. She lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York, and is a doctoral candidate at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.