Book Review: Profiles From Prison: Adjusting to Life Behind Bars

• Date: 01 May 2005
• Published date: 01 May 2005
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016805275702
• Subject Matter: Articles

was an important book that captured a real-life event and resulted in a valuable lesson we

should all learn about justice and the American trial system.

Elizabeth M. Corzine

University of Southern Mississippi

Profiles From Prison: Adjusting to Life Behind Bars, by Michael G. Santos. Westport, CT:

Praeger, 2003, 275 pp.

DOI: 10.1177/0734016805275702

Michael Santos is one of the more than 2,000,000 men and women presently in United

States prisons. He also is one of the few who has been fortunate enough to obtain both a B.A.

and an M.A. during the 16 years he’s been incarcerated in federal prison. Profiles From

Prison is one of three books Santos has published from behind bars. With the objective of

understanding contemporary prison culture, Santos interviews 19 men with diverse life expe-

riences, criminal histories, sentences, and methods of adapting to imprisonment. The men

represent a wide variety of types: street thugs, members of the Mafia, first-time offenders,

immigrants, the educated, the illiterate, and middle-class offenders.

At the time of the interviews, these convicts were housed with Santos at Ft. Dix, a low-

security federal prison in New Jersey. Ft. Dix is the largest single federal institution and is

made up of two compounds that house 2,000 men each. Prisoners at Ft. Dix have less than 20

years to serve on their sentence. However, the men’s stories draw on all their experiences at

many different federal and state facilities of varying security levels.

Classic prison community research predicts that prisoners do time, and they experience it

differently at the beginning, middle, and end of their sentences. Therefore, the stories are

organized according to the amount of time left on the current sentences: Lilliputian (less than

5 years), Bantam (5-10 years), Elephant (10-20 years), and Towering (20 years).

Santos argues that prisons do not correct but that there are opportunities for convicts to

improve themselves. Yet, he argues as well, most prisoners do not take advantage of such

opportunities because they do not think that they have any powerto change. Using himself as

a role model, Santos claims that adjustment is taking responsibility for one’s actions, trying

to atone for the crime, and setting goals with the objective of learning skills that will lead to a

successful life in the free world upon release. Nevertheless,he notes that many convicts try to

pass their daily lives as easily as possible. Few prisoners think they have anything for which

to atone; in fact, many view themselves as victims of a system that unconstitutionally con-

victed them and gave them excessive sentences. Such perceptions influence the way prison-

ers adjust to their confinement. This book paints a portrait of the multiple and complex meth-

ods men use to adjust to imprisonment.

Adjustment means different things to different prisoners, however. Some men serve time

as Santos does. Others continue their criminal lives from the streets and look forward to

resuming the same criminal activities when they get out. Although some career criminals do

in fact decide to change, Santos observes that change may be too little and too late. When and

if they recover from the culture shock of imprisonment, first-time offenders often try to do

118 Criminal Justice Review