Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire

In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. A pioneer in criminal justice severity—from assembly-line executions to supermax isolation, from mandatory sentencing to prison privatization—Texas is the most locked-down state in the most incarcerated country in the world. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, explains how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became a template for the nation.

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