Hard Time: A Fresh Look at Understanding and Reforming the Prison, 4th Edition, is a revised and updated version of the highly successful text addressing the origins, evolution, and promise of America s penal system. Featuring numerous updates reflecting the latest research, the new 4th Edition of Hard Time: A Fresh Look at Understanding and Reforming the Prison offers compelling insights into the origins, evolution, and future promise of America's prison system. Along with extensive revisions to all chapters, changes for this new edition include greatly expanded coverage of the types of hardships experienced in prison, completely rewritten chapters on prisoner violence and suggested reforms, and a new chapter on "supermax" prison facilities with an assessment of the efficacy of long-term segregation. The text retains the popular previous edition's vivid and often poignant ethnographic accounts drawn from male and female inmates along with prison staff, giving voice to the complexities of contemporary prison life--and greatly enhances our understanding of the prison experience and urgent need for reform. More timely and important than ever, Hard Time: A Fresh Look at Understanding and Reforming the Prison, 4th Edition, offers illuminating insights into life behind and beyond the prison bars in America--a nation whose criminal justice system incarcerates more of its citizens than anywhere else in the world.