Sick Justice

Inside the American Gulag

In America, 2.3 million peopleùa population about the size of HoustonÆs, the countryÆs fourth-largest cityùlive behind bars. Sick Justice explores the economic, social, and political forces that hijacked the criminal justice system to create this bizarre situation. Presenting frightening true stories of (sometimes wrongfully) incarcerated individuals, Ivan G. Goldman exposes the inept bureaucracies of AmericaÆs prisons and shows the real reasons that disproportionate numbers of minorities, the poor, and the mentally ill end up there.

Goldman dissects the widespread phenomenon of jailing for profit, the outsized power of prison guardsÆ unions, CaliforniaÆs exceptionally rigid three-strikes law, the ineffective and never-ending war on drugs, the closing of mental health institutions across the country, and other blunders and avaricious practices that have brought us to this point.

Sick Justice tells a big, gripping story thatÆs long overdue. By illuminating the systemÆs brutality and greed and the prisonersÆ gratuitous suffering, the book aims to be a catalyst for reform, complementing the work of the Innocence Project and mirroring the effects of Michael HarringtonÆs The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962), which became the driving force behind the war on poverty.