Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration-Fast Shipping

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“A haunting and harrowing indictment . . . [a] significant achievement.”—The New York Times Book Review

L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist * New York Times Book Review Paperback Row * Time Best New Books July 2020

Waiting for an Echo is a riveting, rarely seen glimpse into Americanjails and prisons. It is also a damning account of policies that havecriminalized mental illness, shifting large numbers of people whobelong in therapeutic settings into punitive ones.

Dr. Christine Montross has spent her career treating the mostseverely ill psychiatric patients. This expertise—the mind incrisis—has enabled her to reckon with the human stories behindmass incarceration. A father attempting to weigh the impossiblecalculus of a plea bargain. A bright young woman whose life isderailed by addiction. Boys in a juvenile detention facility who,desperate for human connection, invent a way to communicatewith one another from cell to cell. Overextended doctors andcorrectional officers who strive to provide care and security inenvironments riddled with danger.

Our methods of incarceration take away not only freedom butalso selfhood and soundness of mind. In a nation where 95 percentof all inmates are released from prison and return to our communities,this is a practice that punishes us all.