Winters' Alternative — Roger Dixon

In the future, just as it is today, the United States faces a major problem with its prison system. It has the highest per capita incarceration rate of any country in the world. To contain costs it tries to pack more and more prisoners into the prisons. For the prisoners with their competing gangs and loyalties this creates a pot waiting to boil over and explode into destructive riots. Is there a way out of this situation? John Winters thinks there is. As an ex-inmate who has gone on to get a PhD he has a better plan. Give the prisoners good training, more space, more autonomy, and total isolation from others on unused government land. They have the choice to work hard and live well or fight the system. This new incarceration has no cells, no administration and no guards. Technology separates it from the rest of the population. Winters' project does, however, have powerful political and underworld interests who oppose it. Drug cartels and organized crime will stop at nothing and are willing to kill to stop the project. As Winters' project moves forward we follow the lives of inmates who choose many different paths to living in their new environment.