Correspondence Course for Jail Personnel. [Complete in 10 Volumes].

Washington, D. C.: United States Department of Justice, [1965]. Later printing. 9 x 6 inches. Varying paginations, but between 8 to 20pp. per volume. Different colored stapled wrappers for each volume, printed in black. Light wear; ownership signature to front wrapper of first two volumes. Very Good.

The complete set of this correspondence course for jailers, with each volume focusing on a different aspect of the job, e.g., "Jail Security", "Feeding Jail Prisoners", "Sanitation, Housekeeping and Safety", "Supervision of Prisoners", and "The Jailer's Public Responsibility and Relationships". Each volume has a short series of questions at the end designed to address the reading comprehension of the student, who would then mail in his or her answers to the Bureau of Prisons.

The set provides a wealth of information about the changing values and aims of the contemporary carceral system in the United States, most notably in Volume 8, "Unusual Prisoners in the Jail." In this volume, for example, alcoholics, juveniles, and the mentally ill are all presented as people who, "as a class" do not belong in jail, whereas "[t]he homosexual prisoner is a threat to the safety and good order of the jail and a moral and physical danger to other inmates" (p. 10). It is worth noting that these values and aims changed over the many (annual?) printings of these volumes -- we have handled a different set from 1951, which was much more derogatory with respect to people with addictions, for example.

OCLC locates nine holdings, although it is unclear from which years.