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Rating: 
Summary: A little too "bleeding heart" for me.....
Review: Although extremely well written, Ms Wynn simply can't shake that "do good" naivete that permeates the privleged - that there's always a little good in everyone. Sorry Jennifer - Downright evil DOES exist - I've seen it during my own stint in Rikers Island(1979, 81-85 HDM, C-95 Clinic)as a medical professional. The corrections policy is far from perfect but, until we find the right approach, sociopaths MUST be kept from my family and yours.
Rating:
Summary: A little too "bleeding heart" for me.....
Review: Although extremely well written, Ms Wynn simply can't shake that "do good" naivete that permeates the privileged - that there's always a little good in everyone. Sorry Jennifer - Downright evil DOES exist - I've seen it during my own stint in Rikers Island (1979, 81-85 HDM, C-95 Clinic) as a medical professional. The corrections policy is far from perfect but, until we find the right approach, sociopaths MUST be kept from my family and yours.
Rating:
Summary: A little too "bleeding heart" for me.....
Review: Although extremely well written, Ms Wynn simply can't shake that "do good" naivete that permeates the privleged - that there's always a little good in everyone. Sorry Jennifer - Downright evil DOES exist - I've seen it during my own stint in Rikers Island(1979, 81-85 HDM, C-95 Clinic)as a medical professional. The corrections policy is far from perfect but, until we find the right approach, sociopaths MUST be kept from my family and yours.
Rating: 
Summary: Life on and of the 'Rock'
Review: Before I start This review a few notes, I have meet the author once or twice having worked in the same jail I also work or worked with all the officers named (a few have recently retired) in this book and know of nearly all the inmates in the book. Jennifer Wynn is liberal and at times overly forgiving of inmates, (She's soft though not as much as I would have guessed) This was expected, she was a journalist and now works to help rehabilitate inmates as they reenter the street ('New York' as they say). In a few passages she uses worn out silly retoric of the left such as: The silly Jesse Jackson misdirect "It cost more to jail the to Yale" This of course is not just comparing apples and oranges it's comparing apples and mack trucks one has nothing what so ever to do with the other. At another point she notes that New Yok city spends about 5 times more per inmate in jail than it does on students in it's public school, again a bad comparision but since most (but no quite all) inmates on Rikers are at best funtional illiterates that rocked out of NYC public schools it probably says more about public schooling than it does about NYC jails. Politics aside it is clear that Wynn has a truly Good heart and is generaly concerned and compassionate about helping inmates turn thier lives around and that is a good thing (and of course it is her job). She has also writen a very readable honest look a the culture of Rikers Island and the innner city. Several passages made me chuckle out loud like her description of prision poetry and trying to teach inmates how to write real poetry. Every once in awhile there are paragraghs where it seems like she almost "gets it" for instance in one chapter she describes how a former inmate is showing off his 30 thousand dollars in ill gotten money to her. He explains to her that when his medicare is approved he will go into rehab at taxpayers expense her response is "'Medicaid? you don't need medicaid, Frank! you could pay for six months at Hazelden with this kind of money'. He didn't get it. he was so used to being taken care of by the state that the thought of paying for drug treatment didn't occour to him." I found this book to more enjoyable the Ted Conovers's "Newjack" because in was not soley focused on the jail setting it takes a much wider view and encompases the everday life of inmates and former inmates as they struggle to stay straight. It is also more balanced in it's treatment of officers and inmates.
Rating:
Summary: A View from the Inside (Inside Rikers)
Review: I don't know if you've seen the movie, "Traffic", starring Michael Douglas. What's so great about that film is that it gives an outsider an insider's appreciation of the problems of drugs entering America. It's a movie that changes attitudes. "Inside Rikers" is that kind of book. Jennifer Wynn gives the outsider an insider's appreciation of the problems of people in prison. She gives an intimate look at some of these people, enough to give the reader a new appreciation for the challenges that these prisoners face on both sides of the prison door. It's up-close-and-personal, a great read, and you'll be thinking about this one a long time after you finish reading it. At least that's been true for me. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Inside Rikers - A Roller Coaster Ride
Review: In the book, Inside Rikers, the author combines statistics with insightful stories of inmates she met while inside Rikers Prison. The stories of inmates are highlighted with social commentary and emphasize the need for social and prison reform. A compassionate advocate for prison reform Wynn writes from the perspective of her experience while teaching at Rikers Prison and while visiting the homes and neighborhoods of the inmates, whose stories she tells. These stories are well written and come across as genuine. The roller coaster ride of those caught up in the drug cycle, poverty, crime, and arrest is oppressive and disturbing. I especially appreciated insight the author provided into the Methadone "Keep Program". This is only one area of great concern and needed investigation Wynn exposed. The success stories of those who were able to rise above the circumstances are both inspirational and encouraging.
Another insight I received was the tendency for a total lack of conscience experienced by the criminal mind. I was sorry to come to end of the book. I was stirred to want to take action. I could only wish the author had given more specific suggestions for steps members of the community can take to accomplish some of the reform needs she advocates. The extensive bibliography at the end of the book may be the starting place for finding this help. I recommend this book to be read and reread by everyone in a position of influence that can affect high-risk neighborhoods and communities.
Rating:
Summary: Inside Rikers - A Roller Coaster Ride
Review: In the book, Inside Rikers, the author combines statistics with insightful stories of inmates she met while inside Rikers Prison. The stories of inmates are highlighted with social commentary and emphasize the need for social and prison reform. A compassionate advocate for prison reform Wynn writes from the perspective of her experience while teaching at Rikers Prison and while visiting the homes and neighborhoods of the inmates, whose stories she tells. These stories are well written and come across as genuine. The roller coaster ride of those caught up in the drug cycle, poverty, crime, and arrest is oppressive and disturbing. I especially appreciated insight the author provided into the Methadone "Keep Program". This is only one area of great concern and needed investigation Wynn exposed. The success stories of those who were able to rise above the circumstances are both inspirational and encouraging.
Another insight I received was the tendency for a total lack of conscience experienced by the criminal mind. I was sorry to come to end of the book. I was stirred to want to take action. I could only wish the author had given more specific suggestions for steps members of the community can take to accomplish some of the reform needs she advocates. The extensive bibliography at the end of the book may be the starting place for finding this help. I recommend this book to be read and reread by everyone in a position of influence that can affect high-risk neighborhoods and communities.
Rating: 
Summary: NYC-specific book about a countrywide dilemma
Review: Insider Rikers is about the island jail that services NYC, and although much of Wynn's material is NYC-specific and her original evidence is all anecdotal, her stories of inmates trying to get out of the oppressive cycle of poverty, crime and conviction should be of universal concern. Her stories are eye-opening: Convicts consistently trying but often failing because of the temptations of addiction, pulling one over or earning a quick buck in an environment where jobs are scarce and ill-paying. Halfway through this book, it felt like she was preaching to the choir because I was utterly convinced of the problems of US jails. What was refreshing and hopeful about this book is that unlike with most social critics, Wynn's material comes from an author who is out there making a difference. Rather than writing from the lofty towers of academia or the safety of a full-time news writing gig, Wynn's stories are from her own experience in a program that is designed to help inmates reform. Wynn's stories that come from this program are sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes hopeful, but her overall portrait of the current prison system is bleak indeed.
Rating:
Summary: Inside Rikers Goes Inside the Heart
Review: There may be criticisms of this book, the main one being that the author is an upper middle class white woman who cannot possibly understand or really appreciate or have anything useful to say that is not self-promoting on the underlying reality of the prison system and the people who populate it. But those who dismiss her and this book on these bases would be doing an injustice to these very people she is writing about. Ms. Wynn is writing from a given perspective. And it is true that this perspective is not from that of the lives of the people she is writing about. But that is exactly what makes the book so powerful and so valuable. Until now, the prison population has been viewed as "them" or the "other." Most books describing the "system" have been written by former prisoners. But Ms. Wynn, writing as a "typical white liberal person," brings this foreign world (for most of us) into very sharp and disturbing focus. People who read this book will come away understanding so much more about the prison system in the United States than they knew before. They will find that it is indeed a billion dollar industry, that in the short run it is a bureaucratic, shallow solution to a very deep problem. But one of the most important and profound insights to be gained is not what prison does to people, or how big an industry it has become, but rather how it is that a society that purports to be so advanced and so humanistic can have created such a living hell for so many millions of people who never really had a chance to begin with. Even more important is that some of the lives Ms. Wynn tells us about in this book are a testament to the strength of the human spirit, and that even in the face of profound adversity human beings can rise above almost any obstacle. Read this book.
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