Information On The State Prison Of Southern Michigan PDF Download

Jackson's history is closely tied to prison history. The prison made Jackson a wealthy industrial town during the Industrial Revolution by providing valuable, cheap labor in the factories. Prison history is not just important to Jackson, it's important to Michigan and the United States. This book is an even more accurate description that might have been "A History Illuminated by a Memoir." For almost three decades (nearly half of its existence), Perry Johnson was intimately involved in the operation of the State Prison of Southern Michigan at Jackson. Starting there as a lowly counselor in 1955, he would, before his career was over, serve the prison as the Deputy Warden, Administrative Assistant to the Warden and Warden - before moving on to oversee all of Michigan's prisons and eventually becoming Director of the entire Department of Corrections. It would be no exaggeration to say that he knew Jackson Prison inside and out. To the reader's benefit, the recounting of this career is not merely a recitation of events, but also an evaluation of their meaning and context. It is a tale told with humor and compassion. As is inevitable in any history of an old-line prison there are stories involving extreme violence and cruelty - but these are leavened with others that are genuinely funny.