Ebook: In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance

April 27, 2010 A death row inmate finds redemption as a prison journalist in this uplifting memoir. In 1961, after a bungled bank robbery, Rideau was convicted of murder at the age of 19 and received a death sentence that was later commuted to life in prison at Louisiana's Angola penitentiary, then the most violent in the nation. Against all expectations, his own included, he turned his up-to-then cursed life around, becoming editor of the prison newsmagazine, the Angolite, and an NPR correspondent who published nationally acclaimed articles on prison violence, rape and sexual slavery, and the cruelty of the electric chair. Rideau frames his 44-year fight to get his conviction reduced to manslaughter and win parole (he succeeded in 2005) as a black man's struggle against a racist criminal justice establishment. More inspiring is his self-reclamation through tough, committed journalism in an unpropitious setting where survival required canny alliance building against predatory inmates and callous authorities alike. To a society that treats convicts as a worthless underclass, Rideau's story is a compelling reminder that rehabilitation should be the focus of a penal system. With probing intelligence but only a ninth-grade education, Rideau honed his acclaimed journalism skills inside Louisiana's notorious Angola prison. In 1961, at the age of 19, he killed a white woman in the course of a bank robbery. Sentenced to death, he was eventually given a life sentence after repeated appeals based on irregularities in his trial and national changes in policy regarding the death penalty. Rideau suffered years on death row and in solitary; once integrated into the broader population, he worked his way onto The Angolite, the prison publication. Eventually becoming editor, he earned the respect of the warden, prisoners, guards, as well as the broader journalism profession, with exposés of the politics and economics of the prison system, earning several prestigious press awards along the way. He struggled with journalistic principles in a highly charged environment in which all sides were hyperpartisan and often violent. After 44 years and scores of appeals lost to political machinations, Rideau was finally freed in 2005. This is more than a prison memoir; it is a searing indictment of the American justice system.

SUMMARY:
In 1961, at the age of nineteen, young, black, eighth-grade dropout, Wilbert Rideau, despaired of the dead-end and small-town future his life held for him. He set out to rob the local bank and in an ill-concieved out and bungled robbery he murdered the bank teller a young, white female. He was arrested and gave a full confession at the local police station while angry mobs chanted kill that nigger outside. From this beginning, where we meet Rideau, newly sentenced to death row, he starts on an extraordinary journey. One that begins in the most violent prison in America, where brutality, years spent in solitary confinement, sexual slavery and local politics govern and confine many in ways that bars alone cannot.The ending to this compelling book is like nothing you will have read before, full of breathtaking suspense and gripping, gritty realism, a heartbreaking, emotionally wrought and magical ending to Rideaus prison life is skilfully and vigorously evoked.This is a powerful and inspirational memoir unlike any other, one that is sure to question our expectations of prisoners and the role of jails in rehabilitating them .