| Ross and Richards introduce a new school of convict criminology for a forthcoming book. They discuss how they gathered together the contributors to form a creative working group in a collaborative effort. The book chapters emerged as writers shared their experiences with prison and academia. The book represents an effort to revitalize the criminology literature with research in grounded experience. In doing so, the authors in this volume hope to illuminate the message that "it's about time" (Irwin and Austin, 1997) time served, time lost, and time that taught us the lessons we share. The convict scholars are not the first to criticize the prison. The contributors pay their respects to the scholars who have attempted in the literature to raise critical questions about prisons and suggest humane reforms. The real problem is that the reformers rarely even bothered to ask the convicts what reforms they desired. The new school corrects this oversight as the faculty are educated "con-sultants.' |
Updated 05/20/2006