Why We Cook: women on food, identity, and connection by Lindsay Gardner
This book is in the same vein as Charlotte Druckman's book Women on Food, but Why We Cook focuses more on women, diversity, and food. It's a collection of essays, interviews, recipes and more from 112 women working in food. There is a variety of writings so it reads really quickly. There are also some compilations of answers to cooking/food related questions both from professionals and home cooks alike. Overall, a quick read about women and their passions and inspiration for the food they make (whether professionally or at home).
A quote I liked:
[Answering the question Who is your mentor or hero?] "...Also the Queen Mothers in Ghana, West Africa, who are the elders who really challenged me. They were like, 'In the US, is it true that a farmer puts a seed in the ground and doesn't pray, doesn't sing, doesn't pour libation, doesn't even say thank you, and expects the seed to grow?' They encouraged me to put the spiritual back into agriculture." - Leah Penniman, cofounder, co-executive director, and farm manager of Soul Fire Farm. (p. 235)
The Backyard Homesteader by Alison Candlin
This is a very broad overview of homesteading. There is SO MUCH covered, but not in depth. There are chapters on starting out your homestead (planning, fencing, buildings, etc.), growing vegetables and fruit, pests and diseases, keeping animals, foraging/hunting/wild food, preserving, and water and energy conservation. I think this book is more geared toward someone either interested in starting to homestead and trying to get ideas or someone who's already doing it and wants to add on something new. You're not going to learn to keep bees with 3 pages about beekeeping, but you could get an idea of what it takes to know if you want to add that or not. There are a LOT of color pictures, but I found the book somewhat lacking overall. In the chapter about planning there are 3 illustrations of how to divide out your property for vegetables, animals, etc. but she never gives any range of space/acreage needed. It would be helpful to show picture 1 and say this could be done on 1/4 - 1 acre lot, etc. Also, in the pest chapter there is a picture of a snail, but literally nothing about slug/snails which are the WORST pest issue for me in my garden (esp. when plants are small or seedlings). It's a pretty book, but I don't know how useful it would be overall. In my opinion there are a lot better homesteading or interest-specific books out there.
A Country Year: living the questions by Sue Hubbell
I wasn't really sure what to expect with this one, but it was underwhelming for me. When Sue Hubbell gets divorced in her 50's she ends up taking over the beekeeping business she and her husband had built on their land (and surrounding rented spots) in the Ozarks. This is a collection of seasonal essays about her life in this remote spot. While some parts were slightly interesting there were several that were very odd or depressing (a suicide at the nearby VFW campground, bugs, a neighbor killing a bobcat, etc.). Overall, I didn't love it. The subtitle "living the questions" didn't seem to really be explored at all in the book. I was hoping to read this one, then her Book of Bees, but I might skip that one now. One thing I found very interesting was while I was reading this book I searched to see what year it was originally published (1986) and found an article about her death in 2018 where it said she had been suffering from dementia and after wandering away from her home and being lost for over 14 hours she moved in with her son and decided she didn't want to slowly die of dementia so she stopped eating and drinking and died 34 days later. Somehow that article and how she chose to die was more powerful than this book for me. Maybe because it's older, but for whatever reason I just didn't get into this one and am not compelled to read more by her. There is a LOT of better nature/self-sufficiency writing out there now.
The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan
In her mid-20's Susannah Cahalan started experiencing weird symptoms that looked like schizophrenia. Her family didn't think she was mentally ill and thankfully a dedicated doctor continued to run tests and found that she had a rare brain infection that mimicked mental illness. Once she received the correct medication she was back to normal, but she came close to being diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to the psych ward. Because of this personal experience Cahalan often spoke at medical and psychiatric conferences to urge doctors to check for this brain infection with other seemingly mentally ill patients. At a conference she is asked if she'd ever heard of Dr. Rosenhan, a psychologist who went "undercover" along with seven other people to see if they could get committed to mental hospitals in the late 1960's. Dr. Rosenhan's paper after his experiment rocked the psychiatric world and was extremely controversial. As Cahalan started digging into this story she discovered that Dr. Rosenhan had landed an extremely lucrative book deal and professorship at Stanford because of this experiment and his scientific paper about it, but the book was never published and the publisher actually sued him to get back the money they gave him. Why did he drop such a wildly successful experiment and not capitalize on it? The more Cahalan dug into this crazy experiment the more questions came up. Did Dr. Rosenhan fabricate details of this experiment? Were there really even 7 other participants? Who were the other people and why have they never come forward about their experiences?
Cahalan explores not only America's history with psychiatric hospitals, but also how widely Dr. Rosenhan's experiment influenced it - and not always for good. What, if anything, has changed today with psychiatric treatments and how things may be improved for the future. This is a fascinating and terrifying book that really pulls back the curtain on psychiatric treatment today and Dr. Rosenhan's influential experiment and it's aftermath. Definitely an eye-opening book.
Some quotes I liked:
"Diseases like the one that set my brain 'on fire' in 2009 are called the great pretenders because they bridge medical worlds: Their symptoms mimic the behaviors of psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but these symptoms have known physical causes, such as autoimmune reactions, infections, or some other detectable dysfunction of the body. Doctors use terms like organic and somatic to describe diseases like mine, whereas psychiatric illnesses are considered inorganic, psychological, or functional. The whole system is based on this distinction, on categorizing illness as one or the other, and it dictates how we treat patients up and down the scale." (p. 4)
"Medicine, whether we like to admit it or not, frequently operates more on faith than certainty. We can, in some special cases, prevent diseases with vaccines (smallpox, polio, measles, for example), or with healthy living measures (by purifying our drinking water or quitting smoking) and preemptive scans (as is the case with prostate, breast, and skin cancers), but for the most part we are limited in our ability to actually cure." (p. 7)
"Sixty percent of lobotomies were conducted on women (one study in Europe found that 84 percent of lobotomies were conducted on female patients), even though women made up a smaller segment of the psychiatric population in state hospitals." (p. 164)
"In fact, the horror show that is our mental health care system today makes Rosenhan's critiques seem obsolete. 'It shows just how quaint the study is - and how misguided it is in a funny way...Psychiatry [was seen] as the arm of the state, when in fact [it is] just as much of a victim of the larger relationships of power,' said psychiatrist and historian Joel Braslow during an interview. 'It's on the other end of the spectrum today,' added Dr. Thomas Insel, former director of the NIMH. 'You have people who really do need help who don't get it because there's no place for them to go.'" (p. 238-39)
"'Behind the bars of prisons and jails in the United States exists a shadow mental health care system,' wrote University of Pennsylvania medical ethicist Dominic Sisti. People with serious mental illness are less likely to make bail, and they spend longer amounts of time in jail...The ACLU filed a lawsuit against Pennsylvania's Department of Human Services (DHS) on behalf of hundreds of people who have been declared incompetent by the court. Problem was, there were no beds available, so they were left in jail - in one case in Delaware County...a mentally ill person, too incompetent to stand trial, languished in jail for 1,017 days." (p. 241)
[a former girlfriend of Dr. Rosenhan] "She had worked with many psychologists and said that they all shared one common trait. 'Look at their focus of study and you can count on it that that's what they have a problem with. That's why they study that particular area.' 'Oh, that's funny,' I said. 'What would Rosenhan's problem be?' 'Well, morality, altruism, being a decent person, I suppose,' she said...'He had an uncanny ability with all his training on personality and character and so on; he had an uncanny way of projecting himself. That you saw him exactly the way he wanted to be seen.'" (p. 269)
"Rosenhan's study, though only a sliver of the pie, fed into our worst instincts: For psychiatry, it bred embarrassment, which forced the embattled field to double down on certainty where none existed, misdirecting years of research, treatment, and care. For the rest of us, it gave us a narrative that sounded good, but had appalling effects on the day-to-day lives of people living with serious mental illness." (p. 280)
In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
Dannie Kohan is a type-A lawyer who loves data and living by the numbers. At an interview for her dream job she is asked the typical interview question - where do you see yourself in five years? And she has her professional answer and her personal answer ready. Her long-time boyfriend proposes that night and that completes part of her personal timeline of goals. But, that night she has a vivid dream where she sees herself in five years and it's not with her now fiancee David. She tries to forget about the weird dream, but then she meets the guy from the dream in real life and he's her best friend's new boyfriend. Dannie tries to avoid him and prevent the dream from coming true and un-doing all her plans, but life has a way of changing the best laid plans. And Dannie has no idea just how upended her life will be in just a few short months.
I think people either loved or hated this book and I'm kind of in the middle. I was totally expecting a "soul mate love story" (even though that's not the kind of book I typically like), but this went in a weird way for sure. It became more about the love between Dannie and her best friend Bella. But, oddly throughout the whole book you don't really feel like Dannie and Bella are that close - they go way back, but don't seem to have anything in common other than that history. So, it was just a weird, weird turn for the book to focus on that so much. It was an odd book for sure and left you hanging at the end which I don't like. But, it was a very short and quick read.
Set Boundaries, Find Peace: a guide to reclaiming yourself by Nedra Glover Tawwab
Nedra Tawwab is a therapist and relationship expert. She's found that most relationship issues stem from boundary issues and she was getting so many of the same questions on her popular Instagram page that she decided to write this book to further flesh out how to have healthy boundaries in all areas of your life. I read Dr. Henry Cloud's Boundaries book that is about boundaries, but from a Christian perspective. Tawwab's book seems like the more current (non-Christian) version of those same principles. I stumbled on Tawwab's Instagram page and really liked her content, so that's why I decided to read this book. Several reviews I read mention that is it slightly repetitive and I agree, but I think she was trying to reiterate how boundaries can play out in a variety of circumstances or relationships and while it might be slightly repetitive, if you have trouble with boundaries maybe you need that repetition to "get it." The book is divided into two parts - Understanding the Importance of Boundaries and This is How You Do the Work of Setting Boundaries. The first part goes over what are boundaries, healthy boundaries, six types of boundaries, what boundary violations look like, etc. The second part gets into how to set healthy boundaries in different types of relationships - family, romantic relationships, friendships, and work. I also really liked the chapter in part 2 about boundaries with social media and technology - this is SO important today and it's so easy to not have boundaries in that area and just get sucked into scrolling on our phones more than we should. While I didn't find anything earth shaking in this book I did like it and she gives LOTS of examples that are helpful. I also liked that at the end of each chapter there are exercises to help you work through examining your own boundaries or issues/areas you might need to work on. And there is also a self-assessment quiz at the end to help show if you have good boundaries or not. Overall, I liked it and this is the kind of information that is always helpful to remind yourself of even if you feel like you have good boundaries. I would also recommend following Tawwab on Instagram if you like this book as she posts similar content there.
A quote I liked:
"Avoidance is a passive-aggressive way of expressing that you are tired of showing up. Hoping the problem will go away feels like the safest option, but avoidance is a fear-based response. Avoiding a discussion of our expectations doesn't prevent conflict. It prolongs the inevitable task of setting boundaries." (p. 7)
Rodney Scott's World of BBQ by Rodney Scott
Rodney Scott grew up with barbecue. He cooked his first whole hog at eleven years old and has been cooking ever since. His parents had several businesses, including selling barbecue and later a restaurant, and Rodney was an only child so he grew up helping in whatever business needed it. He harvested tobacco, worked in the restaurant, helped cook hogs, whatever needed to be done. As an adult he decided that he wanted to keep cooking barbecue for his profession and wanted to help the family barbecue business expand. But, he and his father butted heads over the business and sadly his father eventually cut him off just as Rodney's own restaurant was taking off. But, Rodney's motto is "every day is a good day" so he focused on his own restaurants and family. Today Rodney Scott is well-known in the barbecue world and has won a James Beard award for his first restaurant. In this book about a third of the book is his story of how he grew up and how he got to where he is now in the barbecue world. The second third of the book explains how to build a fire pit to slow cook whole hogs and other ways to grill or barbecue various cuts of meat. The final third is recipes for other dishes he grew up eating or are now on his restaurant menus, including a variety of sauces and seasonings. I had heard of Rodney Scott before, but his story is so unique and he seems like such a down to Earth person despite his notoriety in the food world. My husband and I had planned a trip to Charleston in 2020 that was canceled because of COVID, so now I have another restaurant to add to my list for when we can reschedule that trip. I definitely want to try some of Rodney Scott's famous barbecue!
Where I Come From: stories from the deep South by Rick Bragg
I LOVED Rick Bragg's book The Best Cook in the World, so I was excited to pick up this new book with essays from his publications in Southern Living and Garden and Gun magazines. The essays are organized by themes like "We will never see their like again," "Faux Southern," and "The best part of the pig." He is such a great writer and you feel like you are beside him as he's relating these stories. He is also very funny - I laughed out loud several times while reading it and read sections to my husband or coworker. If you like Rick Bragg or you're from the South you will love this collection of essays.
Some quotes I liked:
[An essay on fire ants] "The fire ant is something else entirely. If you catch a June bug in your hands, to look at it, it will not call in three thousand of its closest friends to try to sting you to death. The fire ant injects an alkaloid venom that, to me, seems just plain unnecessary, and may bite with its mandibles, just to be mean. It is one of the few things that can hurt you with either end, like an alligator. But it is far worse than an alligator, because you are unlikely to step on an alligator by accident when you take out the trash." (p. 32)
[On new/current country music] "New country is as country as black turtlenecks, all had and no cow. It is bland, but more than anything it is a formula of clichés, stitched together by pretty people who have never, it seems, picked a row of okra or packed for Panama City in a paper bag from Piggly Wiggly. They sing in exaggerated accents about tractors, but you know they never had to go looking for their class ring in the roadside weeds after their girlfriend flung it there." (p. 70)
"It used to be, when you saw a truck, it meant work, and not just any kind of work. Look in the back and there would be six feet of logging chain going to rust, a half bottle of brake fluid, and a shovel and mattock...But it used to mean something, to drive a truck. If you did, you knew how to sling a wrench, or lay a brick. You hauled manure in it, or at least sand. You owned a hydraulic jack, and a four-way lug wrench. I have a good friend who drives a truck. He is an insurance man. He ought to be ashamed of himself. Nissan makes a big ol' truck. They call it, no foolin', a Titan. But I ain't never seen a shovel in the back of one." (p. 74-5)
[Even though I am a born and raised Southerner, I don't like tomato sandwiches. But, this story was hilarious] "It never fails. At a talk or signing somewhere in the frozen tundra, someone will ask what we eat 'down there,' like I'm going to answer 'dirt' or 'bugs.' 'A good tomato sandwich,' I say. 'Tomato and what?' they always say. 'Just tomato, mayo, salt, and pepper, on white bread,' I always say. 'Yuck,' they always say. This should be a test for where the South begins. 'Yuck' should tell us we have strayed too far toward the ice cap and should make a U-turn and not slow down until we see Spanish moss." (p. 85)
[On carrying a pocketknife] "A Southern man, knifeless, was pitiful. Men without knives were like men who rode around without a jack, or a spare tire, just generally unprepared for life. A man without a knife could not fish, hunt, or work at any respectable employment. I am a writer, which is one step up from helpless, but I have always had a pocketknife. I believe, foolishly, it holds me close to my people." (p. 201)
A Rhythm of Prayer by Sarah Bessey, ed.
I read Sarah Bessey's book Jesus Feminist and remembered liking it, so I was interested to check out this book. Bessey edited this collection of prayers and contributed several herself. It's described as a prayer circle in literary form, but it felt very random and un-cohesive to me. I did like that all the contributors were women and very diverse, but I didn't like that many of the prayers had a political agenda or angle. Not that you can't pray about your political views or concerns, but that's not what I was personally looking for. I did really like one called "For All the So-called Lost" by Rev. Emily Kegler, but overall I didn't love this one and wouldn't personally recommend it.
The Body Keeps the Score: brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
Bessel van der Kolk is a trauma expert and psychologist. When he was first starting his career he was working at a VA hospital when many veterans were coming back from the Vietnam war. He saw many veterans afflicted with PTSD (although it wasn't named at the time) and that sparked his career researching how trauma affects people and the best ways to treat them. He talks about how trauma affects the body and the brain and can actually change neurological pathways in the brain - making it much harder to recognize and treat. While a lot of the information is interesting, it's also terrifying to read about how neurologically damaged abused children are and how hard it can be to effectively treat the trauma instead of the symptoms (ODD, ADHD, etc.). The final section of the book focuses on types of treatment that he has found helpful in his own practice (and through research) like EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), yoga, mindfulness, neurofeedback, etc.
While it's obvious that van der Kolk is an expert and has spent his entire career trying to help trauma victims, I felt like the book was more written for therapists or psychologists. The average person trying to change unhealthy patterns probably won't find a cure here. He also focused on more severe trauma - child abuse/molestation, rape, combat PTSD, etc. And obviously those are probably more obvious traumas, but I wish there had been a little more about other family dysfunction/trauma. I also greatly appreciated his hesitation with drugs as quick fixes or cures, but I would have loved to see a chapter on how marijuana could be used to help with some of these issues. Overall, it was an interesting book, but long, detailed, and somewhat repetitive.
Some quotes I liked:
"...We now know that more than half the people who seek psychiatric care have been assaulted, abandoned, neglected, or even raped as children, or have witnessed violence in their families. But such experiences seemed to be off the table during rounds. I was often surprised by the dispassionate way patients' symptoms were discussed and by how much time was spent on trying to manage their suicidal thoughts and self-destructive behaviors, rather than on understanding the possible causes of their despair and helplessness." (p. 24)
"Over the past three decades psychiatric medications have become a mainstay in our culture, with dubious consequences. Consider the case of antidepressants. If they were indeed as effective as we have been led to believe, depression should by now have become a minor issue in our society. Instead, even as antidepressant use continues to increase, it has not made a dent in hospital admissions for depression. The number of people treated for depression has tripled over the past two decades, and one in ten Americans now take antidepressants....Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, spends more on antipsychotics than on any other class of drugs. In 2008, the most recent year for which complete data are available, it funded $3.6 billion for antipsychotic medications, up from $1.65 billion in 1999. The number of people under the age of twenty receiving Medicaid-funded prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs tripled between 1999 and 2008." (p. 37)
"Somatic symptoms for which no clear physical basis can be found are ubiquitous in traumatized children and adults. They can include chronic back and neck pain, fibromyalgia, migraines, digestive problems, spastic colon/irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue, and some forms of asthma. Traumatized children have fifty times the rate of asthma as their nontraumatized peers." (p. 98)
"The children of unpredictable parents often clamored for attention and became intensely frustrated in the face of small challenges. Their persistent arousal made them chronically anxious. Constantly looking for reassurance got in the way of playing and exploration, and, as a result, they grew up chronically nervous and nonadventurous." (p. 161)
"If we get a raise or a friend tells us some exciting news, we will retain the details of the moment, at least for a while. We remember insults and injuries best: The adrenaline that we secrete to defend against potential threats helps to engrave those incidents into our minds. Even if the content of the remark fades, our dislike for the person who made it usually persists." (p. 176)
"Our attachment bonds are our greatest protection against threat. For example, children who are separated from their parents after a traumatic event are likely to suffer serious negative long-term effects. Studies conducted during World War II in England showed that children who lived in London during the Blitz and were sent away to the countryside for protection against German bombing raids fared much worse than children who remained with their parents and endured nights in bomb shelters and frightening images of destroyed buildings and dead people." (p. 210)
"More than half a million children and adolescents in America are now taking antipsychotic drugs, which may calm them down but also interfere with learning age-appropriate skills and developing friendships with other children. A Columbia University study recently found that prescriptions of antipsychotic drugs for privately insured two- to five-year-olds had doubled between 2000 and 2007. Only 40 percent of them had received a proper mental health assessment...In one year alone Texas Medicaid spend $96 million on antipsychotic drugs for teenagers and children - including three unidentified infants who were given the drugs before their first birthdays. There have been no studies on the effects of psychotropic medications on the developing brain." (p. 226)
A Measure of Belonging: twenty-one writers of color on the new American South by Cinelle Barnes, ed.
I wasn't really sure what to expect from this collection of essays from writers of color writing about "the new American South." There were several stories I really liked, but many didn't seem to have anything to do with the South at all and seemed random or out of place. In the introduction Cinelle Barnes writes about going to a work dinner with her husband and another wife asked her if she was liking the area (I'm assuming Charleston, but it's not said directly) and when she said there were things I would change the woman said, "Honey, nobody asked you to move here," and got up and left. I obviously don't know their whole conversation, but Barnes grew up in New York so it could have been more Yankee discrimination and not racial, but either way extremely rude of the other woman. I did appreciate that not every story was about race issues or discrimination (although that's still an obvious, on-going issue). Overall, it was OK and I'm giving it 3 stars instead of 2 for the stories that I really liked.
Gardening Hacks: 300+ time and money saving hacks by Jon Vanzile
No matter how long you've been gardening you can always learn more. So, I was excited to pick up this book of "300+ hacks" for gardening. It's divided into 5 chapters - seeds, seedlings, and cuttings, container gardening, outdoor gardening, indoor gardening, and tools, pests, and harvesting. While there were a handful of helpful tips/hacks a lot of it was VERY repetitive. There could have been one longer hack about reusing various objects for seeds or plants - instead just in chapter 1 there were 17 "hacks" about various things to reuse for starting seeds. Each chapter was similar and there was significant overlap in the hacks from chapter to chapter. I think this could have been a better book if the hacks were edited down and organized better within each chapter. There were some good tips, but you definitely had to weed through to get to them. I personally wouldn't recommend this one.
The Second Chance Club: hardship and hope after prison by Jason Hardy
Jason Hardy grew up in New Orleans and knew that the criminal justice system was very broken. But, he wanted to be part of the solution, not just complain about how it didn't work, so he got a job as a probation and parole officer. This book reflects his 4 1/2 years in that role and sadly shows just how little difference he made in that time. When prisoners get out of prison and are on parole they are not eligible for ANY social services benefits, so sadly unless these newly released prisoners have a support system (and few do, hence why they were in jail to begin with) already in place it's only a matter of time before they re-offend again. With almost no resources to offer, probation and parole's role is just to maintain contact and send the person back to jail if/when they reoffend. It's depressing and demoralizing work with few rewards. I read a lot of hard books and hands down this is by far the most sad and depressing book I've ever read - and that is saying something for me. I was really hoping for at least ONE success story by the end of the book. But, the two parolees Hardy considers "a win" at the end of his employment were both helped by agencies outside the department of corrections - honestly both cases just got lucky at the right time. In the epilogue he does give some updates of newer programs New Orleans is offering that do shed a little more light on this issue, but it's probably just a drop in the bucket of success against the overwhelmingly depressing issues of mass incarceration, illegal drug trades, and lack of decent jobs and housing for former inmates. While I feel like a lot of attention has been given to mass incarceration and false imprisonment (especially for people of color), I haven't read much before this book about the issues facing former inmates when they get out. But, this issue is equally or more important because if nothing changes for these people they will go back to what they know and what got them arrested to begin with. A very sad and hard book, but shining a much-needed light on this issue.
Some quotes I liked:
"Like addiction, the phenomenon Travis was describing appeared to transcend race, age, and gender. People who got the least respect in the world felt the greatest need to demand it of bosses, friends, even strangers on the street. They felt slights more acutely than the rest of us. And the impulse to right the wrong frequently cost them what little opportunity they got." (p. 39)
"Forty-three percent of parolees in Louisiana would be back in prison within five years. Nationally, the parole revocation rate was closer to 25 percent. Another 11 percent absconded, meaning they stopped showing up and were never heard from again. Those numbers didn't include people who died of drug overdoses and people who completed their community supervision sentences as poor and addicted as they were when they got out of jail. Federal probation costs close to $4,000 per offender per year, compared to the roughly $1,000 per offender we spend in Louisiana...A Vera Institute of Justice study found that the average cost to incarcerate someone in the US is $33,000 per year. At about $17,000 per year, Louisiana is on the low end of per-inmate spending. In five states, the annual tab exceeds $50,000." (p. 48)
"The money became an addiction unto itself, and the skills that a person acquired as he rose in the drug world weren't transferrable to most other professions. In time, many drug dealers who tried to go straight came to see themselves as uniquely unsuited to lawful employment. Chest thumping, shit talking - all the Don't-cross-me-or-else measures essential to survival in illegal enterprises like drug distribution and robbery - were deal-breakers in the civilian workforce." (p. 63)
"The longer I studied successful drug dealers, the surer I became that the lifestyle addiction wasn't fed only by money and power and the thrill of the chase. Getting over on authority figures was a fix unto itself. Conning a cop or a PO was one thing. All the dealers had done that at one time or another. Not many could claim they'd gotten a judge soapboxing about the American dream." (p. 141-42)
"Lately we'd had a rash of offenders relapsing in their last month in drug court. When their counselors asked what had happened, the offenders were honest. If they graduated, they were off probation and out of drug court. They lost their access to services. Medicaid and SSI carried over in theory, but there was no one along to help the offenders stay in those programs' good graces. Before enrolling in drug court, most offenders had extremely negative views of the criminal justice system. Eighteen months later, offenders were so attached to the support systems they'd found in drug court that they were failing drug tests on purpose and asking their POs to get their probations extended another year." (p. 188)
"Good jobs will always be the single strongest crime reduction measure there is. When you take away need, most forms of risk don't know what to do with themselves. Companies that go out of their way to hire offenders - to recruit them rather than tolerate them - and that do so with an understanding of where many offenders are coming from, are doing a far greater service to public safety than any court or law enforcement officer." (p. 241)
"A lot of people at the New Orleans District were beginning to wonder whether the current moment in the drug debate represented a dangerous half measure in which drugs were still illegal enough to sustain a black market but not so illegal that dealers feared being caught. To put it another way, the half measure approach gave up the drug war's greatest asset - fear among drug dealers that their profession could land them in prison - but without gaining the tax revenue or regulated product or sharp declines in black-market violence that were supposed to come with legalization. "Worst of both worlds' was how some POs came to describe it." (p. 245)
