What a fantastic and riveting read. Of course, as with real life, the ending was upsetting (heroin really does kill and to this day, dealing with addiction to heroin is something we as a society still haven't figured out). I think one thing this highlights is something I've learned from reading and talking to activists who work with prisons. There really is a "different world" in prisons. Even with all the motion we've made since the 60s and 70s, prison remains a strange institution that has some moral abstract basis and purpose for existing in society for the rehabilitation and punishment of those who commit crime, but generates its own logic, and its own hierarchy, and perpetuates itself. Just like in Beto and McAdam's day, today prisons try to help fund themselves using prison labor, which has come up here before. United States prisons and the justice system as a whole still needs dire reform.