When you begin reading Silja Talvi's book, Women Behind Bars, it appears that it is going to be a simple read. It is written in a journalistic style that reports in detail the life circumstances of imprisoned women in the U.S. Through compelling storytelling, Talvi supports her claims with reference to court documents and other credible material, as well as women's voices through her visits to several U.S. federal and state prisons.

This is arguably the greatest strength of Women Behind Bars; Talvi provides a medium for the most silenced voices in America to be heard. She conveys how such silencing can, and has had, dire and even fatal consequences for imprisoned women.

Prisons don't work. That's the theme of Words Without Walls, an anthology of writing and art by women in prison in Nova Scotia. This project was compiled and published by Books Beyond Bars, the Halifax-based prison library program.

The book contains the work of over twenty women, each of whom is or has been incarcerated in one of two female detention centres in Nova Scotia. And each poem attests to the complicated, heart-breaking and lonely emotional landscape of the female experience of the justice system.

What is perhaps most striking about the poems is what is left out. Theoretically what these women share is crime, so it would make sense to expect a book of poems about the thrill of a close-call robbery or the hard-talk of gangs and drugs.

AT SEVENTEEN, T.J. Parsell was tried as an adult and sent to prison for five years after robbing a Fotomat outlet with a toy gun. His first day in the general population, he was drugged and anally raped by a gang of men. Afterward, the perpetrators flipped a coin to determine whose âeoepropertyâe the teen would become.

Men rape in prison every day. They target those who are younger, physically weaker, smaller in stature, inexperienced in prison life or suspected to be gay or gender-variant.

IMPRISONMENT may effectively prevent freedom of movement âe" but the heart and mind are not so easily stilled. With the release of Prison Voices, the rumbling sounds of women and men behind bars have been amplified. Editors Lee Weinstein and Richard Jaccoma have assembled contributions from across Canada into a well-designed volume presented in clear, accessible language.

Produced by Fernwood Publishing in collaboration with the John Howard Society, this collection of inmate-written poetry, fiction and essays will inform, provoke and surprise readers.