Gates of Injustice is a compelling expos? of the U.S. prison system: it tells how more than 2 million Americans came to be incarcerated ? what it's really like on the inside ? and how a giant ""prison-industrial complex"" promotes imprisonment over other solutions.

Alan Elsner paints a terrifying picture of how our prisons really work. You'll hear how race-based gangs control institutions and prey on the weak?and how a rape epidemic has swept the U.S. prison system. You'll discover the plight of 300,000 mentally ill prisoners, many abandoned to suffer with grossly inadequate medical care.

Elsner takes you inside ""supermax"" prisons that deny inmates human contact and reveals official corruption and brutality within U.S. jails. You'll also learn how prisons help to spread infectious diseases throughout society ? one of the ways the prison crisis touches you, even if you've never had a brush with the law.

• 2 million prisoners: how it happened and why. Why the United States locks away 6-10 times more people than other Western societies.
• The other victims. What it's like for convicts' families left on the outside.
• No place for the sick or weak. Prison medical care: varying from substandard to shocking.
• Life after prison: the realities of parole. What's supposed to happen ? and what really happens.
• The ""prison-industrial"" complex: The hidden politics of imprisonment.

Gates of Injustice is an extraordinarily compelling expose of the American prison system now completely updated: how more than 2,000,000 Americans came to be incarcerated; what it's really like on the inside; what it's like for the families left on the outside; and how an enormous "prison-industrial complex" has grown to support and promote imprisonment in place of virtually every other alternative. Reuters journalist Alan Elsner shows how prisons really work, how race-based gangs are able to control institutions and prey on weaker inmates, and how an epidemic of abuse and brutality has exploded across American prisons. Readers will discover the plight of 300,000 mentally ill people in prisons, virtually abandoned with little medical treatment. They'll also meet the fastest growing segment of the prison population: women. Readers go inside "supermax" prisons that cut inmates off from all human contact, and uncover the official corruption and brutality that riddles jail systems in major cities like Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and New York. Finally, they'll learn prisons accelerate the spread of infectious diseases throughout the broader society--just one of the many ways the prison epidemic touches everyone, even if they've never met anyone who's gone to jail.