Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90935 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-14
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Synopsis
Nineteen years ago, Erwin James was sentenced to life imprisonment. Over the past five years, he has written powerfully about prison life for the Guardian. The Home Stretch picks up where the enormously popular A Life Inside left off. Like A Life Inside, it does not glorify wrongdoing, nor does it seek to justify the crimes of its author or any other prisoners. However, with one eye to the outside world The Home Stretch sets out to answer some of the questions raised by his first collection of articles. James considers the nature of freedom, and what exactly his life will look like when he is eventually released. He also talks candidly - and with great wit - about the unexpected way the world has changed during his imprisonment. The Home Stretch asks how someone who has been imprisoned for so long deals with a life beyond the prison gates.

Customer Reviews

The Outside Is Near
The Home Stretch: From Prison to Parole

Following on his first book and his Guardian articles Erwin James writes of life in open conditions, working and slowly rejoining society. He does it with the same accute and insightful way he wrote the first book. His freedom is nearer but he has some final steps to take and if he slips up it will be back to the closed system. His friends are all in different places some out, some in the Appeal Courts, some not able to handle life outside the closed system. The things we all take for granted he marvels at and after nearly 20 years inside we would too. I found this book intresting, uplifting and engaging. Prisoners are not, nor should be forgotten and just locked up. It is for the good of society that we all take an intrest in what happens behind bars.

get the first book

this is the 2nd book by this author, the 1st was better - this can be a bit boring

How to influence people in the right way
I have just burned through both Erwin James' books and cannot heap enough praise on his meticulous work. His observations of all the people involved in incarceration - prison staff and prisoners, review boards, education agencies and suchlike - paint a picture of us all as humans at our best and worst. We come to understand how our systems and people can often be cowardly and sometimes courageous - doing the right thing because either way, by doing it or not, life depends on it. As we progress though his last dozen years or so, James' efforts to change become evident through his writing, and I became engrossed in the care he takes to see life and lives as they are, without distortion. It's priceless - James makes no claims about his ideas or writing, yet it is rare to read a perspective so clear and untainted with personal or political agenda. The result is page after page of refreshment, with glimpses into my own capacity for violence, confusion and punishment, that caught me broadside. Time will tell if I remain changed by reading these books, but I hope to. If ever there was a hopeful book about people, for people, this is it.