Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society
In: Studies in Crime and Justice
Stateville penitentiary in Illinois has housed some of Chicago's most infamous criminals and was proclaimed to be ""the world's toughest prison"" by Joseph Ragen, Stateville's powerful warden from 1936 to 1961. It shares with Attica, San Quentin, and Jackson the notoriety of being one of the maximum security prisons that has shaped the public's conception of imprisonment. In Stateville James B. Jacobs, a sociologist and legal scholar, presents the first historical examination of a total prison organization-administrators, guards, prisoners, and special interest groups.Jacobs applies Edward Shi