Unusual Punishment: Inside The Walla Walla Prison, 1970-1985

Unusual Punishment details the astonishing events and complex personalities surrounding the collapse of a decades-old prison culture in one of America's legendary penitentiaries as well as the upheaval that followed and became national news. In Walla Walla, Washington, the warden once exercised absolute authority. On his word alone, an offender could be isolated for weeks, naked, in a cold dark cell or sent to a terrifying mental health ward. Any employee could be fired at will. Guards and prisoners alike called it "super custody." In the early 1970s, well-meaning but na?ve reform ignited chaos, creating a prison environment unlike any other. Convicts abused new freedoms, riling prison-made choppers in the Big Yard, openly using drugs, and taking lives. Frustrated and afraid, most of the correctional officers quit or looked the other way. A new superintendent curtailed the most dysfunctional inmate privileges and transferred troublesome incarcerated leaders to distant institutions. After a guard was murdered and a cell block rioted, numerous officers rebelled, demanding a brutal crackdown and return to super custody. When forty-two officers refused to take their posts the superintendent fired them all. The courts intervened and politics changed. In 1981, a charismatic leader-charming in public and tyrannical in private-took command of a newly created department of corrections. With skill and determination, he imposed his will transforming the agency into a modern correctional system. Book jacket.

• | Author: Christopher Murray
• | Publisher: Washington State University Press
• | Publication Date: Mar 15, 2016
• | Number of Pages: 256 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback/Social Science
• | ISBN-10: 0874223393
• | ISBN-13: 9780874223392