Texas Tough

John Irwin, a most lucid critic of American criminal justice in both its rehabilitative and warehousing incarnations, had a pronounced influence on my own work. His writing on the internal cultural dynamics of California’s liberal penology of the 1950s and 1960s advanced the humanitarian skepticism of path-breakers like Donald Clemmer and Gresham Sykes and brilliantly combined sociology and autobiography. My heart goes out to Katy and her family who will miss him more than we will.