The Informant

KALW News is on a holiday, but we’ll be back next week! In the meantime, tune to 91.7fm at 5pm every night for our news show and check out our friends at California Watch, the Prison Law Blog, and The Crime Report for good breaking news coverage. If you’re on Spring Break yourself and looking for media suggestions, here’s what we’ll be reading and watching over break:

Books

• The Toughest Beat, by Joshua Page dissects the rise of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the state’s powerful and notorious prison officers union. From its cultural origins in Folsom State Prison to its current, somewhat fragmented state, Page shows how the union contributed to the growth of California’s prison system–as well as its current political strategy.
• Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable, is being hailed as perhaps the most thoroughly researched book on Malcom X’s life. Marable, a professor at Columbia University, who died April 1, was a much-lauded progressive scholar, and his last book has received terrific reviews (with some exceptions). We haven’t read it yet, but it’s on our Spring Break list.

• In the Place of Justice, by Wilbert Rideau, covers the decades he spent inside Angola Prison in Louisiana. The state has one of the highest incarceration rates in the county, and Angola, subject of much controversy over its history, has received a lot of praise for its rehabilitation programs recently.

Movies

• On the Outs takes a look at the juvenile justice system through the stories of three New Jersey girls. (Check out reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.)
• Sherrybaby, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, follows a woman as she leaves prison and tries to reconnect and rebuilt her life.
• Bugsy. Because nothing says Spring Break like Vegas and mobsters.

Suggestions? Leave them in the comments.