Shadow of Childhood Harm Behind Prison Walls

Prison. Just reading the word conjures up mental images of harshness and negativity. While the word 'criminal' summons feelings of fear, disgust, anger, aggression, and revenge. These near-universal feelings about criminals are the foundation of prisons as places where harm, through neglect, indifference, and paucity, festers and replicates like a virus. For this reason, any conversation about prison and its potential for anything other than harm must start with thepeople who live there. In The Shadow of Childhood Harm, Wolff, using a balance of compassion and evidence, takes readers through the lives of people who end up inside prison. Guided by the words of those who have lived the experience of harm, she weaves an expansive body of research that lays barethe harm that began in childhood (the curse) and its subsequent shadow that later, during adolescence and adulthood, manifests as harm to self and others, eventually culminating in crime that results in incarceration, where harm there, once again, repeats like a bad dream. With authority and rigor, Wolff uses ethics, law, science, and compassion, to call out the anti-humanism roots underpinning the (un)intelligent design of the current correctional system and rings in a new way of intelligentlydesigning and maintaining a just, fair, and person-centered system of asylum of and for humanity.

This book offers an extraordinary analysis of the nature, prevalence, and consequences of harm in the lives of people living in prisons. More importantly, the discussion goes beyond describing harm to offer concrete, feasible, sustainable, and evidence-based solutions that can be implemented to turn prisons into healing communities. Dr. Wolff reminds us that virtues like kindness, authenticity, persistence, empathy, consistency, humility, and respect are powerful tools for healing, calling for a complete change of ideology within prisons. Liliane Windsor, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of Illinois-Champaign Urbana, A book that will captivate both those new to this field and experts alike. Dr Wolff masterfully combines her decades of experience conducting research in prison with international evidence and powerful testimonies from incarcerated people. The book is engaging, informative and, above all, very human. It contextualizes some wrenching data, and offers practical suggestions for researchers and practitioners. A book to read, and read again. Eva Aizpurua Trinity College Dublin

Nancy Wolff, an economist and distinguished professor, is the director of the Bloustein Center for Survey Research at Rutgers University. She has authored over a 100 articles, chapters, and reports on the influence of public policies and justice practices on the incarceration and rehabilitation of justice-involved persons. Her research explores the need for behavioral health services among justice-involved individuals, treatment interventions thatare responsive to those needs, and the role of environmental conditions and training in improving the effectiveness of treatment interventions provided inside correctional settings. For over a decade, Dr Wolff spent two or more days a week inside prisons in Pennsylvania and New Jersey teaching, building, andco-leading literacy and skill-building programs. She has received numerous awards for her prison-based service programs.