I have just burned through both Erwin James' books and cannot heap enough praise on his meticulous work. His observations of all the people involved in incarceration - prison staff and prisoners, review boards, education agencies and suchlike - paint a picture of us all as humans at our best and worst. We come to understand how our systems and people can often be cowardly and sometimes courageous - doing the right thing because either way, by doing it or not, life depends on it. As we progress though his last dozen years or so, James' efforts to change become evident through his writing, and I became engrossed in the care he takes to see life and lives as they are, without distortion. It's priceless - James makes no claims about his ideas or writing, yet it is rare to read a perspective so clear and untainted with personal or political agenda. The result is page after page of refreshment, with glimpses into my own capacity for violence, confusion and punishment, that caught me broadside. Time will tell if I remain changed by reading these books, but I hope to. If ever there was a hopeful book about people, for people, this is it.