After Prison--What?

Booth, Maud Ballington, 1865-1948Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 365K words
Chapters: 37

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.After Prison--What? by Maud Ballington BoothAuthor: Booth, Maud Ballington, 1865-1948,Language: English, Class: HV: Social sciences: Social pathology, Social and Public Welfare, Release Date: Mar 27, 2014

Editor's review

This book takes up the social question of “what comes after prison.” Writing from long experience in prison ministry and relief work, the author discusses the practical difficulties former prisoners face on re-entering society: employment discrimination, broken family ties, social prejudice, and self-rebuilding. The book does not stop at moral exhortation but returns the problem to concrete situations of daily life, stressing the importance of acceptance, companionship, and practical help, in the earnest tone of a social reformer of the time. An old public-domain work, it records the observations and proposals of workers in the early twentieth century and still has reference value today: readers can trace the evolution of ideas about social assistance and reflect on the tension between punishment and rehabilitation. Written for general readers and combining argument with cases, it suits those concerned with social welfare, judicial correction, and vulnerable groups, though its historical limits should be kept in mind and it should not be taken as a guide to contemporary policy.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers concerned with the reintegration of former prisoners and social assistance
Practitioners in charity, social work, and volunteering
Those interested in the history of social reform and early correctional thought
Students in judicial and community correction fields

Not a good fit for

Practitioners needing contemporary correctional policy and legal provisions
Academic readers expecting systematic empirical data and quantitative research
Casual readers seeking only light stories or novel-like narrative

Reading tips

Read the preface and conclusion first to grasp the author's stance, then move to the chapters.
Note the relief practices proposed in the book and compare them point by point with current practice.
Read alongside contemporary materials on community correction or social work to identify differences of era.
After reading, write a short review sorting out which proposals remain useful and which no longer apply.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What is the core issue this book discusses?

At its core is how former prisoners reintegrate into society after release, including making a living, family acceptance, social prejudice, and psychological rebuilding. Drawing on practical relief experience, the author argues for help and acceptance over mere exclusion, showing readers the specific difficulties of reintegration.

Do the book's views still apply today?

Its basic ideas about social acceptance and companion-style help remain illuminating, but specific practices and institutional contexts have changed with the times. Read it as material on the history of social assistance thought, drawing on the ideas rather than copying the measures, and judge them in light of contemporary policy and practice.

What use is this book to non-specialist readers?

It helps ordinary readers understand the real situation former prisoners face and reduces simplistic moral judgment. The issues of employment, family, and prejudice it discusses are relevant to daily life; after reading, one better understands the meaning of social assistance work and how individuals can take part.

How does the author's identity affect the reading?

The author long took part in prison ministry and relief work, and the narrative carries a practitioner's earnestness and a social-reform stance. Readers should note the emphasis this perspective brings: the book focuses on real difficulties and calls for relief rather than neutral data analysis, so one should keep one's own judgment while reading.

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About the author

Booth, Maud Ballington, 1865-1948 Author · British · 1865–1948

Maud Ballington Booth (1865–1948) was a British-born social reformer who later became active in the United States. She helped found the Volunteers of America and devoted herself over many years to prison relief work, focusing on the circumstances and prospects of prisoners after release. One work by her is held in this collection, After Prison--What?, whose title points directly to the practical question of where released prisoners go from there. Her writing thus centres on social relief and prison reform, addressing public discussion of rehabilitation and resettlement after punishment. Public information is limited, so the details of her life and the full range of her writings cannot be described in depth; even this single work, however, shows her effort to turn practical concern into prose and offers some reference value for understanding prison relief and social reform thinking of the time.