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An uncommonly beautiful writer, Dr. Christine Montross brings a scientist's rigor and a clinician's compassion to her examination of the profoundly broken U.S. incarceration system. Waiting For an Echo lays bare the appalling human suffering that occurs every day in our prisons and jails - and points us toward a better way. --David C. Fathi, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project This is a tremendously important, transformative book. Dr. Montross poignantly captures the unnecessarily brutal experience of individuals incarcerated in America. As a Nation, we should heed her call for meaningful change to restore basic humanity. --Ellen Gallagher, Department of Homeland Security Attorney and whistleblower Waiting for an Echo is a literary masterpiece that exposes the dark side of our criminal justice system and then provides a kind and wise vision for a better way to do it. Too often we, the public, ignore what goes on in prison, we say 'lock 'em up and throw away the key, ' and then abuses proliferate in the darkness. When evidence of torture surfaces -- the beatings, the rapes (too often by staff), the innocents who spend decades behind bars, the prisoners driven stark raving mad by prolonged solitary confinement -- we turn away, 'it's too dark.' Dr. Montross exposes the underside and the folly of our criminal justice system, but with poignant stories and explanations of how human psychology works inside the carceral system just as in the lives of all of us, making the narrative accessible and compelling. She shares the understanding needed for us to see the humanity of those we have locked away, and the courage to seek a better way. She provides a much-needed path forward, a vision of how much better we could do criminal justice and help those who have lost their way regain their humanity. --Terry A. Kupers, M.D., M.S.P. professor at The Wright Institute and author of Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation In Waiting for an Echo, Christine Montross writes with intelligence, insight, compassion and plain good sense about the state of incarceration in the early 21st century. With a keen eye and a sense of decency she correctly, in my opinion, assesses the shortcomings of our present system and takes us on her very personal journey of inquiry into the of the way we do prison and jail in the United States. She observes that 'When the treating facility is a prison safety, security and punishment necessarily take precedence over recovery and care.' This is the essence of the issue we need to confront, the mentally ill do not belong in prison or jail and Dr. Montross eloquently tells us why. --Martin Horn, Distinguished Lecturer in Corrections at the John Jay College, City University of New York

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Dr. Christine Montross, a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow in General  Nonfiction, is an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a practicing inpatient psychiatrist. She is an award-winning poet and the author of Body of Work and Falling into the Fire.

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