In college I randomly watched a documentary about Russian prisons and ended up going down a massive rabbit hole that fundamentally changed how I think of the prison industrial complex. Basically, that’s how I became an abolitionist. So when I read the synopsis of this, I knew I needed it immediately.

In the book, the prison, known as The Colony, has been decommissioned. But it is so far out in the middle of nowhere that it has basically been forgotten by everyone, including the state.

”It’s a corral where undesirables are tossed onto a pile, much like landfill, a place no one wants to see, smell or think about.”

But the book doesn’t give us that luxury — the luxury of moral distance. We know these prisoners have committed terrible crimes, and yet, compared to the warden who is hunting them for sport, we find ourselves rooting for them. We’re confronting the uncomfortable truth that the system is oftentimes more heinous than the people it is punishing.

"It’s a slow thing, simmering away, until you realize there’s no turning back. You lose all affection for your fellow man, you don’t even realize that they’re the same as you."

Dostoevsky famously wrote that "the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” Does a society view the prison system as a mechanism for punishment or rehabilitation? Should a justice system measure its success by how well an individual is reintegrated into society, or by how many people it has locked up? A state’s commitment to basic human rights — adequate food, shelter, medical care, and protection — reflects its moral baseline. Measuring the US on these metrics...it’s not looking good, folks!

The general public finds it difficult to sympathize with criminals of any kind, making it hard to garner any support for destroying the prison industrial complex. After all, why fight for a murderer's human rights when there are puppies that need saving? The crimes matter, and certainly no one would argue against holding people accountable for their actions, but it’s much easier to distance ourselves from the horrors that happen in these prisons rather than extend basic humanity to the worst of us.

As another reviewer mentioned, the book also illustrates the banality of evil. Taborda, a guard at The Colony, finds himself following orders despite knowing that what goes on behind those walls isn’t right. Evil is not always big and scary. In fact, it is often routine and state-sanctioned, and it is easy to fall into the “just doing your job” trap.

"I stayed. I don’t know exactly why. It seemed like the right thing to do. I thought that was the way justice worked. You know, sir, after years shut up in here, we forget what it’s like in the world outside.”

The book is only 100 pages and is fast-paced enough to finish in one sitting. It’s categorized as dystopian, but after reading it, it feels all too familiar. The dystopian now, folks!

I highly recommend reading Of Cattle and Men either before or after this. It takes place in the same world and offers a similarly bleak look at choosing between our values and survival.