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This book is based on the author's eighteen years' experience as physician and psychiatrist for the Indiana State Prison. He has observed at close range some ten thousand prisoners of all ages and grades of offense. In sixteen chapters he offers a graphic account of prison routine, problems of administration, individual histories, and personal impressions concerning crime and law enforcement formed largely through his observation of the working out of the processes involved.
The best chapters are those describing aspects of prison life—Checking In, The Walled City, The Way Out, Another Way Out, Big House Celebrities, etc.,—and the interpersonal relations developed in this special setting. In the latter respect, in the brief personal histories interspersed throughout, the characterizations for the most part are succinct and illustrative of the many-sided tragedies inevitably comprised in these situations, but without getting beyond the limits of the two dimensional picture to the analytic level of psychoinstinctual conflict whereon the subjective factors of maladjustment involved in criminotic development may be grasped.
This is to be regretted in that the author has brought to view a mass of varied and relevant material representative of an extensive cross-section of national life. In the preface he stresses that his work is not intended as a scientific treatise on crime, the aim being rather that of intelligent reporting whereby large numbers of general readers may gain some insight into criminal situations problems as they exist today. The general nature of the presentation is indicated by the chapter offering material entitled “True Crime Stories,” being extracts from a series of radio broadcasts by the author. There is a good sketch of the activities of the Dillinger gang, with short biographical notes, affording a picture of the behavior of these individuals as they appeared in prison before escape which will be of interest to the psychiatrically oriented reader.