Hard Time: Banged Up Abroad Raving Arizona, 2nd Edition

"Hard Time makes the Shawshank Redemption look like a holiday camp" - News of the World

As a teenager in an industrial UK town, Shaun Attwood covets the American Dream. He moves to Arizona with only student credit cards and becomes a stock-market millionaire. After throwing Ecstasy parties for thousands of ravers, Shaun bumps heads with Sammy the Bull Gravano, an Italian Mafia mass murderer, who puts a hit out on him.

The dream turns into a nightmare when a SWAT team smashes Shaun's door down. Inside Arizona's deadliest jail, Shaun struggles to survive against an unpredictable backdrop of gang violence and sickening human-rights violations. Over time and bolstered by the love and support of his fiancée and family, he uses incarceration for learning and introspection.

With a tiny pencil sharpened on a cell door, Shaun documents the conditions: dead rats in the food, cockroaches crawling in his ears at night, murders and riots... Smuggled out of maximum-security and posted online, his writing shines the international media spotlight on the plight of the prisoners in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail.

Join best-selling author Shaun Attwood on a harrowing voyage into the darkest recesses of human existence in Hard Time, the second book from the English Shaun trilogy.

Hard Time was televised worldwide on Nat Geo Channel as an episode of Banged Up Abroad called Raving Arizona.

"A buttock-clenchingly terrifying cautionary tale" - Meg Rosoff author of How I Live Now

Shaun Attwood is a former stock-market millionaire and Ecstasy supplier turned public speaker, author and activist, who is banned from America for life. His story was featured worldwide on National Geographic Channel as an episode of Locked Up/Banged Up Abroad called Raving Arizona (available on YouTube). Shaun’s writing – smuggled out of the jail with the highest death rate in America run by Sheriff Joe Arpaio – attracted international media attention to the human rights violations: murders by guards and gang members, dead rats in the food, cockroach infestations... While incarcerated, Shaun was forced to reappraise his life. He read over 1000 books in just under six years. By studying original texts in psychology and philosophy, he sought to better understand himself and his past behaviour. He credits books as being the lifeblood of his rehabilitation. Shaun now tells his story to schools to put young people off drugs and crime. He campaigns against injustice via his books and blog, Jon’s Jail Journal. He has appeared on the BBC, Sky News and TV worldwide to talk about issues affecting prisoners’ rights.