Handy information in book about prison life

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Review

Letters From Prison: Felons Write About the Struggle for Life and Sanity Behind Bars

By Shawn Thompson

HarperCollins

266 pp., $32 (hc)

Letters From Prison contains only small selections from a fraction of the letters journalist Shawn Thompson has received from 130 correspondents doing time in various prisons over the last 10 years, but that doesn't limit the book's scope. Letters From Prison is a wide-ranging exploration of life behind bars.

The book is organized into chapters that each focus on a specific subject, including basic survival skills, cell diplomacy, religion, contact with animals and the natural world, prison art (including body art), and love behind bars (between prisoners, between prisoners and prison officials, and between prisoners and those on the outside).

Thompson includes sections from different letters in each chapter and uses his own comments to string them together into a cohesive thematic whole. But he rarely includes sections from his own letters. This book is dominated by the voices of prisoners themselves.

"I was looking for a way to help the prisoners find their own voices," the author said in an interview. "[The book] is like an interior monologue, when they're sitting in their cell at night and they're talking to themselves and learning about themselves."

Thompson used to work as a prison reporter for the Kingston (Ontario) Whig-Standard. But he doesn't have a particular take on the justice system. He doesn't condemn the system and he doesn't condemn or champion his correspondents. This book steers away from justice issues to concentrate instead on what the author calls "simple human issues."

Letters From Prison simply describes the prison experience from the perspective of those on the inside.

Thompson's correspondents are incarcerated in a variety of institutions scattered across the continent-from Attica, Leavenworth and Folsom in the U.S. to Canada's Kingston, Millhaven, and Collins Bay and various smaller institutions in between. Accordingly, the book is a collection of varied voices, both male and female. Some of the cons are angry, some are really funny, some are philosophic, and some are, well, a little off (Thompson includes letters from cons serving time in the "bug ward," or prison mental hospitals). Most are surprisingly eloquent and introspective.

As one prisoner says, "[D]on't let time do you. It's only time. What difference does it make if you spend 10 years in jail or 10 years in a job you hate and a marriage you hate? Who has more stress?"

Perhaps the most affecting material in the book deals with pets in prison.

Cons befriend animals such as frogs, mice, ants, squirrels, snakes, crickets, birds, and spiders.

The lack of interaction with the outside world makes prison a unique place. Thompson takes care to define prison slang, and the book's opening chapter includes some basic prison survival skills, such as "Don't be a rat," "Don't look at anybody, but don't let anybody stare at you either," and "Find a way to sleep, but keep one eye open while you do."

Letters From Prison also provides important information for those considering embarking on a life of crime-such as the best time to rob a bank in downtown Toronto. (Prisoner Stephen Pang says it's best to strike at holiday time-such as Christmas-during bad weather and during morning or evening rush hours or police shift changes.)

Thompson also thoughtfully includes a list of joint dos and don'ts compiled from the advice of cons. Too bad it runs over two pages; if it had been placed on one page it could have been a handy clip 'n' save reference.

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It's estimated that more than 17 per cent of Canada's federal prison population is composed of Aboriginal people, even though the federal census indicates that Aboriginal people comprise merely three per cent of Canada's total population. Thompson avoids making any political statements in Letters From Prison, but in an interview he said that "the staistics speak for themselves. But statistics don't really motivate change. People's hearts and minds motivate change."

This book appeals to the heart and to the mind. It reveals a world that few people enter, and it turns statistics into people. Letters From Prison is a compelling read.