Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail

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Michael L. Walker (Assistant Professor of Sociology, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota)

Indefinite

Doing Time in Jail

Michael L. Walker (Assistant Professor of Sociology, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
24 June 2022

Social discrimination; Social mobility; Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies; Penology & punishment; Prisons

An intimate, first-hand account of the emotional and physical experience of doing time in jail and the strategies for enduring it.

Jails are the principal people-processing machines of the criminal justice system. Mostly they hold persons awaiting trial who cannot afford or have been denied bail. Although jail sentences max out at a year, some spend years awaiting trial in jail-especially in counties where courts are jammed with cases.

City and county jails, detention centers, police lockups, and other temporary holding facilities are regularly overcrowded, poorly funded, and the buildings are often in disrepair. American jails admit over ten million people every year, but very little is known about what happens to them while they're locked away.

Indefinite is an ethnographic study of a California county jail that reflects on what it means to do jail time and what it does to men. Michael L. Walker spent several extended spells in jail, having been arrested while trying to pay parking tickets in graduate school. This book is an intimate account of his experience and in it he shares the routines, rhythms, and subtle meanings that come with being incarcerated. Walker shows how punishment in jail is much more than the deprivation of liberties. It is, he argues, purposefully degrading. Jail creates a racial politics that organizes daily life, moves men from clock time to event time, normalizes trauma, and imbues residents with substantial measures of vulnerability. Deputies used self-centered management styles to address the problems associated with running a jail, some that magnified individual conflicts to potential group conflicts and others that created divisions between residents for the sake of control. And though not every deputy indulged, many gave themselves over to the pleasures of punishment.

By: Michael L. Walker (Assistant Professor of Sociology Assistant Professor of Sociology University of Minnesota)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 165mm, Width: 242mm, Spine: 29mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780190072865
ISBN 10: 0190072865
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 24 June 2022
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Michael L. Walker is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. His broad research interests include social control, stratification, and inequality, which he pursues through studies of the criminal justice system.

Reviews for Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail

Indefinite argues that legitimate change in the way this country deals with people accused of breaking the law would have to begin with the recognition of their humanity. --The Arts Fuse

Winner of Winner, 2022 C. Wright Mills Award, The Society for the Study of Social Problems Winner, 2022 Charles Horton Cooley Book Award, Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.
Winner of Winner, 2022 Charles Horton Cooley Book Award, Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction Finalist, C. Wright Mills Award, The Society for the Study of Social Problems.
Winner of Winner, 2022 Charles Horton Cooley Book Award, Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.