Abstract
The USA has the largest prison population in the worlcl More than one million people, about four in every 1,000, are currently locked up. The ratio for African-American men is even higher: 31 per 1,000. According to Prison Conditions in the United States, a recent report by Human Rights Watch in New York, more African American men in their twenties are now in prison, on probation or on parole than are in college or university at any age.
Justice Department figures show that the number of prisoners doubled between 1980 and 1990; prison officials expect an increase of another third by the middle of this decade. This seems assured by the 60 mandatory sentencing laws passed by Congress which set heavy minimum, non- negotiable sentences. In addition, within the past year, the Supreme Court has made at least six rulings that will limit the rights and protections of criminal defendants and inmates. Yet this leap in the rate of incarceration has not had any significant effect on the rate of crime.
The writers presented here are or were inmates in the Massachusetts correctional system. They are not political prisoners, nor are they all victims of direct censorship. But once prisoners are locked away, they become mute and invisible to those on the outside; their. voices may as well be stilled for all we hear of them. Yet these are people with stories to tell and stories that need to be heard.
Their work came out of writing programmes run by New England PEN and Curry College, and was compiled by Monroe Engel, a writer and former senior lecturer in English at Harvard University, who has taught at Norfolk prison for the past three years under the PEN programme.
Prison journals have long offered a vehicle for expression and communication among prisoners and with people outside. In Massachusetts, an important and wide- ranging forum is provided by Odyssey, a magazine which originated in Norfolk prison. It was banned from the prison at the end of 1990, and is now published in the community. Luke Janusz, who began editing the magazine while at Norfolk, describes its history, its ambitions, and its importance for inmates on page 17. Subscriptions are available from Odyssey, POBox 14, Dedham, Massachusetts 02026, USA.
Nan Levinson