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Book Cover
E-book
Author Cox, Stephen D., 1948-

Title The big house : image and reality of the American prison / Stephen Cox
Published New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, ©2009

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Description 1 online resource (x, 222 pages, 22 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations, photographs
Series Icons of America
Icons of America.
Contents Touring the institution -- How to build a big house -- Your life as a convict -- The art of humiliation -- Sex -- You built it, now try to run it -- A tale of two prisons -- Rajahs and reformers -- Prisons you can't tear down
Summary ""The Big House" is America's idea of the prison - a huge, tough, ostentatiously oppressive pile of rock, bristling with rules and punishments, overwhelming in size and the intent to intimidate. Stephen Cox tells the story of the American prison - its politics, its sex, its violence, its inability to control itself - and its idealization in American popular culture. This book investigates both the popular images of prison and the realities behind them : problems of control and discipline, mainenance and reform, power and sexuality. It conveys an awareness of the limits of human and institutional power, and of the symbolic and iconic qualities the "Big House" has attained in America's understanding of itself"--Jacket
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-211) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Prisons -- United States
Prisoners -- United States.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Penology.
HISTORY -- General.
Prisoners
Prisons
United States
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780300154955
030015495X
1282352229
9781282352223
9786612352225
6612352221