This work is a compelling account of the unintended social, financial, and personal consequences of incarceration on the families of prisoners. This book shows that those doing time on the inside are having a ripple effect on the outside - reaching deep into the family and community life of urban America. The author gives us the personal stories of what happens to the families and communities that prisoners are taken from and return to. Carefully documenting the effects of incarceration on the material and emotional lives of families, this groundbreaking ethnography reveals how criminal justice policies are furthering rather than abating the problem of social disorder. Braman also delivers a number of genuinely new arguments.