Author: Tom Murton and Joe Hyams
Publisher: Grove Press B271
Year: 1970 Print: 1 Cover Price: $1.45
Condition: Very Good. Light wear
Genre: Non Fiction/History
Pages: 237
80120154E

For anybody who wants to know more about the "Brubaker" story behind the film, this book will help you understand how prisons worked before prison reform took place. Before Tom Murton came along, the Tucker Farm Prison was run more like a plantation than a prison where prisoners were whipped, tortured, and brutalized under inhumane conditions.

Tom Murton was hired to help prison reform at Tucker Farm Prison near Pine Bluff, Arkansas. When he got there, he realized that the prisoners were running the prison without actual free men working as employees. The prison was a financial opportunity to provide income rather than prison reform. The prisoners worked more like slaves on a plantation. They were punished brutally with a strap, the infamous Tucker telephone strapped to the men's big toe and their private part, and others as well.

This book helped me understand how in a short time that one man, Tom Murton, could help change prison reform by being in the prison. To this day, we don't know how many prisoners were murdered and buried in unmarked graves. This book is a revelation and a sad chapter in prison and Arkansas history. You can't reform prisoners by imposing inhumane conditions. Prisons aren't about making profit and income but rehabilitation.