Yet most law abiding citizens continue to believe that sending more people to jail for longer sentences is the most effective way of dealing with crime. Afraid of the violence they see all around them, they seem to give way to a desire for vengeance that is most often provoked by fear, and support anything that even sounds suitably punitive. It is this fear, and the ignorance I believe is prompted by it, that I will be attempting to chip away at with Framingham. As a writer, I do this best not through academic analysis or theoretical argument but simply by telling the stories of the people involved - stories whose power will rise above even the most astutely argued of political treatises. The book's primary focus will be on the lives of inmates at MCI Framingham today, with one or two women providing the central narrative drive.
Most people forget that even behind bars women's lives go on.
Regardless of the institution in which they are housed, or the individual policies adopted, inmates develop passions, interests, tastes and dislikes the way all of us do. And that, in essence, is the point. Inmates are as human as the rest of us. The way they are treated effects the way they behave in later life as surely as present circumstances dictate the futures of us all. By telling prisoner's stories, good, bad and indifferent, Framingham will show how America's increasing reliance on the purely punitive distorts the aspirations of long term inmates by its refusal to teach, treat and train women, who, under different circumstances, might become law abiding and productive members of society.