Nov 7, 2012
Facing the U.S. Prison Problem 2.3 Million Strong is a massive, thoughtful book written by someone from inside "the belly of the beast," who knows from years of personal experience what works and what doesn't. Ironically, most prisons today are not set up to rehabilitate...
Feb 6, 2012
Feb. 2, 2012
Dr. Karl Menninger
Former convict and Kansas City Star reporter J.J. Maloney recalls his 17-year association with Dr. Karl Menninger, the avatar of prison reform.
by J.J. Maloney
In December, 1972, I attended a conference on prison reform in Topeka, Kansas...
Feb 6, 2012
Feb. 6, 2012
Missouri State Penitentiary
J. J. Maloney, the founder of Crime Magazine, spent 13 years in prison for a murder he committed during an armed robbery when he was 19 years old. Paroled in 1972, he went to work for The Kansas City Star as a book reviewer and...
Jan 23, 2012
Jan. 23, 2012
Jack Henry Abbott
Jack Abbott sold himself to Norman Mailer as the “Super Convict.” Mailer turned the letters Abbott sent him into the best-selling book, In the Belly of the Beast, and assisted Abbott in gaining parole in 1981. Six months later Abbott stabbed...
May 16, 2010
May 16, 2010
Dartmoor Prison
Opened in 1809 to hold French soldiers captured during the Napoleonic Wars, Dartmoor Prison became Great Britain’s version of Devil’s Island for the most hardened of British convicts. by Robert Walsh
“There are two ways to enter...
Oct 9, 2009
Devil's Island
An essay on the history of the most famous and dreaded prison of all time. Recommended reading for those who think a "get tough" policy on crime is a new idea, or that it works.
by J. J. Maloney
As American politicians embrace a continually tougher...
Oct 9, 2009
Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City The story of the disastrous 1954 riot that leveled much of the Missouri State Penitentiary and left four convicts dead and 30 wounded. One of the dead inmates was a police informant, and seven men were convicted of that murder...
Oct 9, 2009
Missouri State Penitentiary
A first person account of what it was like to serve time in the maximum-security prison at Jefferson City, Missouri.
by J. J. Maloney
When I was sent to the Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City, in February 1960, there were 2,...
Oct 9, 2009
{Ed. Note: The average person doesn't give much thought to the subject of AIDS among prison inmates, but as the number of American convicts grows exponentially -- so does the problem of AIDS in prison. Each year approximately 1,000 convicts die from AIDS. Even more...
Oct 9, 2009
Edgar Smith
Edgar Smith, with William F. Buckley Jr. blithely playing his stooge, wrote his way to freedom from the Death House in Trenton State Prison in 1971, becoming the most famous death-row prisoner of his time. Fourteen and-a-half years earlier, Smith -- at age 23...
