The return of INSTEAD OF PRISONS comes at a time when it is very much needed, when two million human beings languish behind bars and barbed wire in the United States, and the reports of abuse, torture, rape, well as false convictions and cruel sentences, make moe people question the whole idea of prisons. But these thoughtful essays are not utopian. They present realistic alternatives to a system which is both cruel and ineffectual. It is more and more clear that prisons do not diminish crime. They diminish the men and women inside, and diminish the humanity of the rest of us outside. I hope this book will be widely read, so it can do for imprisonment what "Uncle Tom's Cabin" did for slavery -- arouse the nation. Howard Zinn