The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison (1993) - Plot & Excerpts
I have really been on a non-fiction kick lately, in hopes of expanding my reading base. It has always been so much easier for me to pick up a fiction book and get lost in whatever world the story puts me in. For non-fiction I have this horrible idea that it's going to be a harder read and I won't enjoy it as much, which is completely FALSE!!! At my office, you get a sense of what genre's people like by what you see them reading in the lunch room. About a year ago, I noticed that one of the girls always has non-fiction books based on prisons, true crime, and maybe even a few biographies. I have always been intrigued by these topics, but wasn't really sure where to even being to find a good/interesting book. So, the other day, I just asked her if she had a favorite book, or how she went about choosing the ones she reads. She happened to have one of her favorites sitting on her desk and let me borrow it!I did not want to put this book down. It was so interesting, and I just got caught up in their world, or at least as close as my mind would allow. Obviously this is something that you would have to have experienced before to really understand, and I can thankfully say that I have never, nor ever plan to be part of the prison crowd. Let me just say that Pete Earley is a very brave man. He spent two years, 1987-1989, going into Leavenworth Prison in Leavenworth, Kansas without protection, to get the "true stories" that he shares. Some history that I was able to pick up on Leavenworth, it was built to resemble the Capitol in Washington D.C., and has a dome and all, obviously it is not made out of the same material. This was the first federal prison built, and is a level 5, Maximum security prison. The inmates are all males, and the majority of the prison staff are male as well. Those females that do venture to work there, are often times kept in assistant/secretary/school teacher type roles, and not guards. Pete Earley not only interviews the inmates, but the guards as well. Some of them tell about their crimes and their lives inside the prison, others talk about their families and their lives before prison. One of the big controversies that first happens in this book is that the newly appointed warden is a black man. This upsets not only the AB (Aryan Brotherhood) inmates, but also those guards who are resistant to be taking orders from a black man. Some of the inmates that Earley talks to are: Carl Bowles, Thomas Little, Thomas Silverstein, Dallas Scott and Norman Bucklew (whose name was changed to protect him). The guards and other prison workers were: Warden Matthews, Eddie Geouge, Bill Slack, and Elke Shoats.Thomas Silverstein was one of the most talked about prisoners during this two year period. He was kept in an isolated cell, with no human contact (solitary confinement) and the lights were kept on 24 hours a day. The only human interaction would be with the two guards that are posted outside his cell, but because he killed a guard, they will not speak to him. Although a very creative artist, he is denied drawing materials for quite some time as a reminder of who is in charge. There is a picture of one of this sketches in the book, and I was incredibly impressed with his artistic ability.As I was reading this book, I kept thinking what life would be like to be a guard at a prison. From the accounts that are shared with Pete Earley, it sounds like there is a fine-line between home and work life, that is quite often blurred. One account, the guy ends up being shot, with a shotgun, by his own children. As the story unfolds it turns out that he was very abusive at home, and the kids finally got sick of it and took matters into their own hands. When you are constantly trying to prove your authority and keep others in check, it would be hard to turn that off when you weren't on the clock. It would be hard to leave this kind of work "at the office" at the end of the day. You would almost be inhumane if you were able to do that on a daily basis and not let the work effect you. Carl Bowles, one of the inmates, has been in prison for the majority of his life, and is very respected/feared within Leavenworth. He likes to pick new inmates and take them under his wing. The guards and other inmates will often snicker that Carl is only picking the new meat so that they can be his "wife" on the inside. Carl talked to Thomas Little when he arrives and makes it clear that if you don't want anyone to mess with you there are three things you can do. You can team up with someone for protection, let them mess with you, or kill them. Thomas decides to take Carl up on his offer and they form quite a friendship. Carl explains to Thomas, after he hears other inmates calling him Carl's "wife" that after spending so much of his life in prison, he is just looking for someone that he can form a tight bond with. Of course he has sexual desires, but those can be taken care of. It is much harder to connect with someone on a more intimate basis while in prison. Someone you can talk to, and share things with, someone who really understands what you go through on a daily basis, and he found this companion in Thomas Little. Carl also goes out of his way to help have Thomas transferred to a lower level prison. Thomas is a first time offender and his crime was a bank robbery. Carl, after coaching Thomas what to ask, finds out that Thomas has been listed as an escape risk and that is why he was sent to Leavenworth. Apparently at the jail Thomas was being held in, the guard allegedly found Thomas' cell bars had been sawed through, and instead of proving that Thomas was the one that did it, they just made a note in his file and off to Leavenworth he went. It was interesting to see what the different guards and inmates chose to talk to Pete about. Even though some of these guys are very dangerous people and have committed heinous crimes, they were very open and honest with Pete in regards to a variety of topics. Some wanted to talk about their families, or how they were better suited in prison than the outside world. Inside, they knew the rules and how to handle themselves, but if you open the gates, it becomes a whole new ballgame. Most of the inmates that were released ended up back inside within a year or two. Sometimes when you've lived one way of life for so long, it's hard to reprogram yourself and adjust to being a part of society again. There were even a few guys who preferred being behind bars than out on the streets. This book was very much outside of my usual realm, but it was very mind-opening and I know it will stay with me for quite some time. I would really like to read something else along these same lines, and if you have any suggestions, they would be much appreciated. If any of this interests you, I would really recommend picking up this book. It is an eye-opening experience and a great read!
I used to dream about fucking women - beautiful women with great big tits ... But this is what I dream about now. I dream about fucking a fat prison guard and stabbing him in the back. It's scary, man. I wonder what I'll be dreaming a year from now, or maybe five years from now. I wonder what I'll be dreaming when I finally get back on the streets.A fantastic piece of journalism. Earley spent two years researching for this book inside Leavenworth Prison, between 1987 and 1989 - a federal prison in Kansas, and at the time maximum-security. He was granted unlimited access to the prisoners and officers - a wonderful thing - and the result was this superb book. Earley interviewed hundreds of prisoners and officers, and in the end settled on nine individuals, with a few random snippets called 'A Voice' from various anonymous individuals placed throughout the book, which like the above quotation, are usually chilling. The writing is candid, concise and makes for very compulsive reading. Earley does a remarkable job; he treads the line between inmate and prison officer and good and evil. We get a comprehensive view of life inside a federal penitentiary from Earley's research and from the candid views of the prisoners - the majority of whom are bank robbers (something I found very striking - the amount of bank robbers that seemed to be in this prison!) and officers and the warden, Robert Matthews. We get a clear image of the layout of the prison at the time, and also an insight into the boiling pot of the Cuban prisoner crisis - Cuban men, many of whom were serving long sentences for petty crimes, had rioted at Atlanta when they were told that they were going to be sent back to Cuba, and as a result hundreds were sent to Leavenworth and kept in fairly bad conditions until Bill Slack was put in charge of the unit. Many of the inmates in the book are prolific bank robbers serving serious time. One man was up for parole having served 15 years for a bank robbery. It looked like he would get parole but he was denied. What really gutted this man was that he knew of a rapist who had kidnapped a teenager, raped her and cut off her arms, and was paroled after just nine years! "How can I take these people seriously [the parole board] ... When they tell me I'm worse than a guy who rapes a girl, chops off her arms, and throws her out on the side of the road?"There's also the sense that an inmate in for a simple stretch for armed robbery could find himself never seeing the light of day again. There are predators, and if he is to defend himself, he could end up killing a man and spending the rest of his life in prison. Thomas Silverstein's accounts were challenging; he brutally murdered an officer in another prison, as he deemed that he was being bullied by him. As a result, he has spent the last six years in solitary confinement. The lights are on 24 hours a day, and he hasn't been outside in six years! At one point does punishment start becoming torture? I found myself wondering. But this book made me come to the conclusion that locking a man up for his crime and depriving him of freedom should be punishment enough. After all, prison is never going to be a nice place to live, no matter where or what kind it is. Anything else beyond that is just cold revenge. But Silverstein's account is still challenging; the murder of a prison officer is inexcusable. These men, at the end of the day, are just doing their job and are part of prison life, like the bars and the boredom, and as one captain puts it, "You have to have a lot of love in your heart to act professionally and do the right thing no matter what you feel." The guards didn't put the men in there and for the most part are just trying to make sure that everyone gets through the day safely. 'The Hot House' sobriquet comes from the fact that the top tier of the cellhouses were like an oven during the brutal Kansa's summer months, and convicts felt like they were melting in their cells at night. That's probably been rectified today, and it's important to consider that this account is an accurate description of the prison and it's inmates and life inside during the late 1980s, and not in the present-day. This is one of the best prison books that I've read, and I can't praise Earley enough for his top-notch journalism, neutralism and hard work in writing this book. I think it's safe to say that he portrays prison life, at least in an American federal maximum-security prison, as accurately as possible, with a variety of voices from both sides inside it's walls.
What do You think about The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison (1993)?
Through a connection with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Earley gained unprecedented access to one of the federal system's most brutal properties. Many of the Leavenworth inmates he profiles are serving multiple life sentences, oftentimes both for crimes committed on the street and once locked up.One, Thomas Silverstein, killed a guard while at an even more infamous federal prison in Marion, Illinois. He lives in a cage in Leavenworth's basement that inspired Hannibal Lecter's Tennessee digs in Silence of the Lambs. Another, Dallas Scott, thought nothing of threatening an inmate's life to induce his girlfriend to smuggle heroin into the prison. William Post looks after the cats at the prison. It's revealed far into the book that he married a girl from the outside while serving time in a penitentiary in California, and when denied parole, cut off all contact with no explanation. Post did this because he gave up hope; there's a lot of that going around in Hot House, even among the guards, who by and large hold a lot of contempt for the inmates, and for their new warden, not least because of his race. Robert Matthews, extensively profiled by Earley, faces an uphill battle as he replaces a popular (and white) warden named Jerry O'Brien and makes unusual managerial changes. This book is not for those horrified by unrepentant violence - and this violence reads quite differently from the made-up murders in mystery novels, or even great magazine pieces on true crime. The convicts Earley profiles might have come into prison with a less-than-shocking story; a lot of them robbed banks and left no casualties. Prison life, however, deepens extreme defensive instincts, with constant threats of shank attacks and rape, the necessity of joining a group or gang for protection, and the underlying tension between guards and inmates. I read this book because I like Earley and I wanted to delve further into the subject of the American prison life and the Aryan Brotherhood, two horrors that inspired me to work as a public defender. What I found required some detachment from the narrative. Morbid curiosity only carried me so far; by the end, I admit I was grateful to leave the Hot House and back into the world of fake murders, where there's more romance to killings - and more reason than deep-seated and festering hatred.
—Lulu
Pete Earley spent 3 years keeping up with the lives of 5 inmates deemed highly dangerous and sentenced to life in the Leavenworth penitentiary. He provides the stories from not only the 5 inmates he interviewed, but also the officers and wardens involved at the Leavenworth penitentiary at the time at that time. The stories are true-pics are provided to provide the reader with a more realistic idea of the "Hot House" and characters involved. I was enthralled with the stories and Early's use of words to pain pictures in the reader's mind. This book made my "would read again" list...and I generally don't read a book more than once!!!!
—Melissa
I love non fiction prison stories and this book has it all. It's one of the most horrifying and fascinating looks at what it's really like inside. Some of the stories and and side stories are truly the stuff that nightmares are made of....and no shit, once you read something like this it's impossible to unread it or forget it. You hear about shitty things that people do to other people all the time but some of this stuff makes you really appreciate having places like Leavenworth, most of the people in here really need to be kept of the streets for a long long time...having said that, the prison code and standards these guys hold themselves to is quite admirable in some twisted, messed up way and more than once I thought about what some of these guys could have become if they'd followed a different path. It's been 25 years since Pete Earley was in Leavenworth and I have no doubt that some things have probably changed since then but this book is still very interesting and readable. If you like true crime, especially prison stuff then definitely read this.
—Bianca
