In a few pages radiant with the forceful eloquence and dry humor for which he was so justly renowned, Darrow offers the man in the street-or more precisely in this case, in jail-a crash course in the theory and practice of law and criminology. He discusses what crime is, what causes it, why more people go to jail in winter than in summer, why the real criminals almost never go to prison, why punishment doesn't work, and-in the end-why the U.S. criminal justice system is in fact a system of injustice, a colossal and barbaric failure. "There should be no jails. They do not accomplish what they pretend to accomplish. They are a blot upon civilization, and a jail is an evidence of the lack of charity of the people on the outside who make the jails and fill them with the victims of their greed." -Clarence Darrow