Book excerpt: The Dark and Evil World of Arkansas Prisons: Transformed Through Federal Court Intervention recounts the transformation of a corrupt, dysfunctional prison system into one consistent with the U.S. Constitution and in line with human standards of decency. The text provides students with a detailed, real-world narrative that reveals the opportunities and challenges involved in criminal justice reform. The text examines how the social, political, and cultural history of Arkansas produced a plantation-type farm prison characterized by inmate labor, violence, and ineffective healthcare. Over the course of 11 chapters, students learn the how prison system operated prior to its reform, the large-scale controversy in the 1960s that initiated the reform of the system, and how the federal courts intervened and forced change on a resistant state legislature. Enlightening and highly practical in nature, The Dark and Evil World of Arkansas Prisons is well suited for courses in prison reform and corrections law.