Huntsville Penitentiary

Huntsville Penitentiary PDF Author: Theresa Jach
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 0738599611
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
The state of Texas, home to one of the largest prison systems in the country, opened its first penitentiary in 1849. The Walls Unit in Huntsville was the genesis of a prison system that became the home of notorious convicts and the focus of much debate about incarceration and the death penalty in the United States. The Walls Unit housed gunslinger John Wesley Hardin, members of the Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker gang, and infamous drug cartel leader Fred Carrasco. Built using convict labor, the Walls Unit was heralded as a modern approach to incarceration in Texas. The prison dominated the landscape of the town of Huntsville when it was built and remains central to that community today.

Huntsville Penitentiary

Huntsville Penitentiary PDF Author: Theresa Jach
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 0738599611
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
The state of Texas, home to one of the largest prison systems in the country, opened its first penitentiary in 1849. The Walls Unit in Huntsville was the genesis of a prison system that became the home of notorious convicts and the focus of much debate about incarceration and the death penalty in the United States. The Walls Unit housed gunslinger John Wesley Hardin, members of the Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker gang, and infamous drug cartel leader Fred Carrasco. Built using convict labor, the Walls Unit was heralded as a modern approach to incarceration in Texas. The prison dominated the landscape of the town of Huntsville when it was built and remains central to that community today.

Eleven Days in Hell

Eleven Days in Hell PDF Author: William T. Harper
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574411802
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Annotation "The 1974 Fred Gomez Carrasco prison siege at Huntsville, TX.".

Prison City

Prison City PDF Author: Ruth Massingill
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820488905
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Prison City looks beneath the placid surface of Huntsville, Texas, execution capital of the world, and sheds light on controversial issues usually hidden behind penitentiary walls. The authors draw on a multitude of voices from the community surrounding the prison - from inmates and guards to neighboring residents and local politicians - to reflect on questions of crime and punishment, vengeance, and forgiveness. We see how the sophisticated communication techniques employed by inmates, information officers, and community leaders shape opinions in the small towns where prisons are a principal industry. The poignant, evocative stories that run throughout the book highlight the incarcerated population's increasing influence in the political, cultural, and economic landscape in the United States. Most of all, Prison City offers opportunities to understand why the Texas justice system has become a global metaphor for incarceration and capital punishment.

Biennial Reports of the Penitentiary Board and Superintendent with Reports of the Physician and Chaplain, Nov. 1880-82

Biennial Reports of the Penitentiary Board and Superintendent with Reports of the Physician and Chaplain, Nov. 1880-82 PDF Author: Texas. State Penitentiary, Huntsville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description


Prison Hostage

Prison Hostage PDF Author: Ronald Wayne Robinson
Publisher: Edwin Mellen Press
ISBN: 9780773485648
Category : Hostage negotiations
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Gripping first-person account. Three inmates seized control of the school-library complex and took prison employees hostage. It ended in death for several of the hostages and two of the inmates. At the time, the author was a correctional educator, and in his final year of education and training as a criminologist.

Texas Tough

Texas Tough PDF Author: Robert Perkinson
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429952776
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
A vivid history of America's biggest, baddest prison system and how it came to lead the nation's punitive revolution In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. The most locked-down state in the nation has led the way in criminal justice severity, from assembly-line executions to isolation supermaxes, from prison privatization to sentencing juveniles as adults. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became the national template. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, historian Robert Perkinson reveals the Southern roots of our present-day prison colossus. While conventional histories emphasize the North's rehabilitative approach, he shows how the retributive and profit-driven regime of the South ultimately triumphed. Most provocatively, he argues that just as convict leasing and segregation emerged in response to Reconstruction, so today's mass incarceration, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights. Illuminating for the first time the origins of America's prison juggernaut, Texas Tough points toward a more just and humane future.

Convict Cowboys

Convict Cowboys PDF Author: Mitchel P. Roth
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 1574416529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
Convict Cowboys is the first book on the nation’s first prison rodeo, which ran from 1931 to 1986. At its apogee the Texas Prison Rodeo drew 30,000 spectators on October Sundays. Mitchel P. Roth portrays the Texas Prison Rodeo against a backdrop of Texas history, covering the history of rodeo, the prison system, and convict leasing, as well as important figures in Texas penology including Marshall Lee Simmons, O.B. Ellis, and George J. Beto, and the changing prison demimonde. Over the years the rodeo arena not only boasted death-defying entertainment that would make professional cowboys think twice, but featured a virtual who’s who of American popular culture. Readers will be treated to stories about numerous American and Texas folk heroes, including Western film stars ranging from Tom Mix to John Wayne, and music legends such as Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. Through extensive archival research Roth introduces readers to the convict cowboys in both the rodeo arena and behind prison walls, giving voice to a legion of previously forgotten inmate cowboys who risked life and limb for a few dollars and the applause of free-world crowds.

The Rope, The Chair, and the Needle

The Rope, The Chair, and the Needle PDF Author: James W. Marquart
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292773277
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
In late summer 1923, legal hangings in Texas came to an end, and the electric chair replaced the gallows. Of 520 convicted capital offenders sentenced to die between 1923 and 1972, 361 were actually executed, thus maintaining Texas’ traditional reputation as a staunch supporter of capital punishment. This book is the single most comprehensive examination to date of capital punishment in any one state, drawing on data for legal executions from 1819 to 1990. The authors show persuasively how slavery and the racially biased practice of lynching in Texas led to the institutionalization and public approval of executions skewed according to race, class, and gender, and they also track long-term changes in public opinion up to the present. The stories of the condemned are masterfully interwoven with fact and interpretation to provide compelling reading for scholars of law, criminal justice, race relations, history, and sociology, as well as partisans on both sides of the debate.

Inside Huntsville Prison

Inside Huntsville Prison PDF Author: James W. Dooley
Publisher: Grace Publications
ISBN: 9780960557608
Category : Prisoners
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description


Getting Life

Getting Life PDF Author: Michael Morton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476756848
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
“A devastating and infuriating book, more astonishing than any legal thriller by John Grisham” (The New York Times) about a young father who spent twenty-five years in prison for a crime he did not commit…and his eventual exoneration and return to life as a free man. On August 13, 1986, just one day after his thirty-second birthday, Michael Morton went to work at his usual time. By the end of the day, his wife Christine had been savagely bludgeoned to death in the couple’s bed—and the Williamson County Sherriff’s office in Texas wasted no time in pinning her murder on Michael, despite an absolute lack of physical evidence. Michael was swiftly sentenced to life in prison for a crime he had not committed. He mourned his wife from a prison cell. He lost all contact with their son. Life, as he knew it, was over. Drawing on his recollections, court transcripts, and more than 1,000 pages of personal journals he wrote in prison, Michael recounts the hidden police reports about an unidentified van parked near his house that were never pursued; the bandana with the killer’s DNA on it, that was never introduced in court; the call from a neighboring county reporting the attempted use of his wife’s credit card, which was never followed up on; and ultimately, how he battled his way through the darkness to become a free man once again. “Even for readers who may feel practically jaded about stories of injustice in Texas—even those who followed this case closely in the press—could do themselves a favor by picking up Michael Morton’s new memoir…It is extremely well-written [and] insightful” (The Austin Chronicle). Getting Life is an extraordinary story of unfathomable tragedy, grave injustice, and the strength and courage it takes to find forgiveness.