cool zine alert!
The Expansion of the American Prison Sell, Peter Gelderoos & Patrick Lincoln
A great primer about prisons in the US (and everywhere!), torture, the prison-industrial complex and why prisons don't solve crime/what could. Starting with how prisoners are treated, it then goes on to dissect the prison economy (from use as veritable sweatshops to itchy mattresses manufactured for nothing and sold to prisons) and a media that tells us most prisoners are violent madmen, while in fact the vast majority are in for trumped up drug charges (while most rapists and domestic abusers walk free). Gelderoos suggests that a radical (root!), community response to crime would be more far more effective than jails that coop up small-time dealers and the wardens who abuse them and pit them against one another, dehumanizing them.
It really helped me synthesize my understandings of prison torture, the prison-industrial complex and the treatment of prisoners during Katrina (when they were abandoned in their cells as the storm came in, because they were considered too much of a "threat" to release or move- yes, this includes people in for not paying driving violation fines) into a workable political viewpoint.
Available through AK Press: http://www.akpress.org/2006/items/worldbehindbars