Waiting for an Echo

<b><b>“A haunting and harrowing indictment . . . [a] significant achievement.” —<i>The New York Times Book Review</i><br><br><i>L.A. Times </i>Book Prize Finalist * <i>New York Times Book Review</i> Paperback Row * <i>Time</i> Best New Books July 2020<br><br></b></b><i>Waiting for an Echo</i> is a riveting, rarely seen glimpse into American jails and prisons. It is also a damning account of policies that have criminalized mental illness, shifting large numbers of people who belong in therapeutic settings into punitive ones.<br><br>Dr. Christine Montross has spent her career treating the most severely ill psychiatric patients. This expertise—the mind in crisis—has enabled her to reckon with the human stories behind mass incarceration. A father attempting to weigh the impossible calculus of a plea bargain. A bright young woman whose life is derailed by addiction. Boys in a juvenile detention facility who, desperate for human connection, invent a way to communicate with one another from cell to cell. Overextended doctors and correctional officers who strive to provide care and security in environments riddled with danger.<br><br>Our methods of incarceration take away not only freedom but also selfhood and soundness of mind. In a nation where 95 percent of all inmates are released from prison and return to our communities, this is a practice that punishes us all.<b><b><br></b></b>