Reading List for People Interested in Working with the Incarcerated Population:
Recommended Reading for Prison Work shared by Susan Shannon M. Div.
This is a very general reading list.
Many of these can be categorized under more than one heading.
Please share this with anyone you know who is interested in working with the incarcerated.
Dharma/Meditation
-Freeing the Angry Mind; How Men can use Mindfulness and Reason to Save Their Lives and Relationships
Peter Bankart, Ph.D.
-That Bird Has My Wings-The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row
Jarvis Jay Masters
-Finding Freedom; Writings from Death Row
Jarvis Jay Masters
-Just Another Spiritual Book
Bo Lozoff
-It’s a Meaningful Life-It Just Takes Practice
Bo Lozoff
-We’re All Doing Time
Bo Lozoff
-Letters From The Dhamma Brothers
Jenny Phillips
-Razor Wire Dharma-A Buddhist Live in Prison
Calvin Malone
-Sitting Inside; Buddhist Practice in America’s Prisons
Kobai Scott Whitney
-Dharma in Hell: The Prison Writings of Fleet Maull
Fleet Maull
Prison Culture
-Prison Ministry; Understanding Prison Culture Inside and Out
Lennie Spitale
-Newjack; Guarding Sing Sing
Ted Conover
-Fourth City-Essays From the Prison in America
edited by Doran Larson
-From the Big House to Your House-
Misc Authors
–Crossing the Yard; Thirty Years as a Prison Volunteer
Richard Shelton
-Wilderness and Razor Wire; a naturalist’s observations from prison
-Ken Lamberton
-Inside: Life Behind Bars in America
Michael G. Santos
-Disguised as a Poem; My Years Teaching Poetry at San Quentin
Judith Tannenbaum
-By Heart; Poetry, Prison and Two Lives
Judith Tannenbaum and Spoon Jackson
-Serving Time, Serving Others: Acts of Kindness by Inmates, Prison Staff, Victims and Volunteers
Tom and Laura Lagana
-Women in Prison-Inside the Concrete Womb
Kathryn Watterson
–Inside the Broken California Prison System
Boston Woodard
-Restorative Justice/ Corrections/-Criminology
–Corrections, Peacemaking and Restorative Justice: Transforming Individuals and Institutions
Michael Braswell, et al
-The Little Book of Restorative Justice
Howard Zehr
–The Rise and Fall of California’s Radical Prison Movement
Cummins, Eric
-The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Punishment
- Richard Snyder
Lorna A. Rhodes
-The Lucifer Effect; Understanding How Good People Turn Evil
Philip Zimbardo
-A Reader on Punishment
Edited by Antony Duff and David Garland
-The Society of Captives; A Study of a Maximum Security Prison
Gresham M. Sykes
-Beyond Bars-Rejoining Society After Prison
Jeffrey Ian Ross, Ph. D
-Last Chance in Texas; The Redemption of Criminal Youth
John Hubner
-Tattoo on the Heart-The Power of Boundless Compassion
Fr. Greg Boyle
-Ministry/Chaplaincy
-Prison Ministry; Understanding Prison Culture Inside and Out
Lennie Spitale
-The Arts of Contemplative Care-Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work
Edited by Cheryl A. Giles and Willa B. Miller
-Prison Chaplaincy Guidelines for Zen Buddhism
Kobutsu Malone
-Dying in Prison; Counseling the Terminal Inmate
Donalyn A. Gross
-Psychology
-Women Who Love Men Who Kill- Sheila Isenberg
-Men Who Rape; The Psychology of the Offender
- Nicholas Groth with H. Jean Birnbaum
-Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy
- Howard Bloch
-Healing the Shame that Binds You
John Bradshaw
-Masters of Disguise; Shame and Guilt
Jane Middleton-Moz
–Dimensions of Forgiveness: Psychological Research & Theological Perspectives
Everett L. Worthington, Jr.
–Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them : When Loving Hurts and You Don’t Know Why
Forward, Susan
–On the Problem of Empathy: The Collected Works of Edith Stein (3rd Volume)
Edith Stein
-Misc. Must-Reads
–Occupying Privilege-Conversations on Love, Race and Liberation
-JLove Calderon
-The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander
-Criminal of Poverty
Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia
Chronicles of San Quentin: The Biography of a Prison
Kenneth Lamott
Just a few documentaries:
-The War on Drugs
-Crips and Bloods; Made in America
-Tupac Thug Angel
-G-Dog
-Kirin Bidi
-Lost for Life
-The Dhamma Brothers