Kindle Freebie: Maximum Insecurity

Maximum Insecurity: A Doctor in the Supermax

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.