No nation in the world incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than the U.S. In fact, the American prison system has grown tenfold in 30 years, while crime rates have been relatively flat. In Going Up the River, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joseph Hallinan gets to the heart of America's biggest growth industry, a self-perpetuating prison-industrial complex that has become entrenched without public awareness, much less voter consent. Hallinan explores the geneis of the prison boom, from the small towns desperate for jobs to the corporations that make a killing on prison business, and contemplates what this merger of punishment and profit means for American society.