About the Book:
After three decades as a successful ear surgeon, William Wright, MD is bored beyond belief. He dabbles with retirement, but finds idleness infuriating. He has to do something.
Then he sees an ad for a doctor’s position from the Colorado Department of Corrections at a supermax prison. Now that, he thinks, would be different. His wife has some thoughts on the matter too. She thinks her husband just lost his mind and is on a collision course with a prison shiv.
After his first day on the job, he wonders if she wasn’t onto something. His first patient is an arrogant, callous youth convicted of five cold-blooded murders. Dr. Wright has to steel himself not to bolt.
Nothing prepares a doctor for life at the Colorado State Penitentiary. He quickly discovers treating maximum security convicts is like treating recalcitrant murderous four-year-olds. Always willing to threaten their doctors with bodily harm, they are more interested in scamming drugs than treatment.
Told with self-depreciating humor and scathing wit, Maximum Insecurity describes Dr. Wright’s adventures practicing medicine in a supermax correctional facility without, he’s glad to say, getting killed even once.
My Comments:
I've told you all before that my day job working as a paralegal, and that my caseload includes criminal cases. Like most people in the criminal law business, I know people who are in prison, and I'll admit to a certain curiosity about what it is really like in there. Dr. William Wright writes about what it is really like to be the doctor in a supermax prison, a prison where they put the inmates who are a danger to themselves or others in a regular maximum security prison. These supermax prisoners are locked in individual cells 23/7 and only allowed out to exercise/shower for an hour a day, with no other inmates. I'd go stark raving mad. Given so much free time, one thing these inmates do is come up with reasons they need to see a doctor (and then they try to convince the doctor they need drugs).
Dr. Wright's stories are funny, though the book is a little repetitive at times. I got it as a freebie on Amazon, and it was definitely worth more than I paid for it. Grade: B.
Sounds interesting!
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