The Slammer: A Critique of Prison Overpopulation, a menacing flaw in American culture

The American prison system has gone off the rails. Originally started in the country by King George III, the pre-American Revolutionary prisons were inhuman and savage petri houses of filth and diseases. The first post-Revolutionary prisons were not much better; in fact, the Civil War prisons rivaled the inhumanity of pre-Revolutionary ones. It was not until Reconstruction when the stark realities of American prisons were viewed by highly educated overseers as shameful and repugnant. A new ...