The Time Game: Two Views of a Prison

In this unusual insider′s look at prison life, both a prisoner and a prison counsellor give their own views of the same events. Each man approaches the "time game" with different purposes, values, goals. Each plays his part in relation to the other, to the prison system, and to the society beyond the walls from which each is, in his own way, cut off. What emerges is an insight into the ways these men think about and interpret their experiences. Their differing, often contradictory, modes of thought never come to grips with one another. Yet despite these differences, the interdependence of prisoner and counsellor as subunits of prison culture becomes clear. Each is a player in a game he cannot win. "Helps fill an important gap between formal empirical studies of the prison and sensational first person accounts."