And then there were the Tubbs and Washingtons of the world, who were already distant and unknowable by the time I met them. I never learned about their pasts or their problems. But once I understood the broad strokes, in some ways the details didn’t matter. The whole premise of prison began to seem absurd: Locking hundreds of traumatized and damaged women in together and threatening them constantly with additional punishments is not rehabilitation. It is not corrections. It is not public safety. It is systemic failure.
