The 1970s were tumultuous years in American prisons, beginning with the bloody uprising at Attica and ending with the even bloodier one at New Mexico State. The Massachusetts prison system was one of the most seriously afflicted. Murders, suicides, riots, strikes, and mass escapes were only the most obvious manifestations of a system in turmoil. Attempts at reform foundered badly there, in part because of strong opposition from prison "guards" or
officers. Kelsey Kauffman's unsparing account of life "on the inside" during that troubled time takes the usually neglected perspective of prison officers. The setting is primarily the maximum-security institution, Walpole; the voices are those of men who felt as trapped as the inmates they guarded.

Prison officers have a subculture and "code" of behavior as binding as that of inmates. As Kauffman quickly makes clear, what recruits learned from their fellow officers—and inmates—was far more important in how they adjusted to the harsh prison environment than was the inadequate instruction they received from the Department of Correction. She describes in detail the role of officers in the everyday life of the prison, their relationship to a seemingly uncaring prison administration, their power struggles with inmates, their methods for coping with inmate violence, and the consequences of their own resort to violence against inmates.

Through the pain filled words of the officers themselves, she chronicles the devastating effect that working in prison had on them and their families. Prison officers, Kauffman argues, are a badly misunderstood and often maligned group. Failure to appreciate their problems and perspectives has inevitably undermined attempts to reform prisons and contributed to the general misery of those who live and work behind prison walls. Although the events that Kauffman discusses helong to a particularly violent time and place, the underlying problems do not. In varying intensity they characterize most prisons most of the time.