General trends of prisons in the Americas / Astrid Arraŕás and Emily D. Bello-Pardo -- Broken systems: prisons and prison gangs in California and the United States / Susan A. Phillips and Jonathan D. Rosen -- The penitentiary system in Mexico: an institution permeated by corruption and controlled by organized crime / Roberto Zepeda Martinez -- Drugs, crime and prisons in Guatemala / Tamara Rice Lave -- Haiti: prisons, organized crime, and drug trafficking / Christa L. Remington and Jean-Claude Garcia-Zamor -- Retribution vs. reintegration: the Trinidad and Tobago reality / Dianne Williams and Randy Seepersad -- Organized chaos: Venezuela's prison crisis / Brian Fonseca and Pamela Pamelá -- Drugs and prisons: the slippery road to the criminalization of drugs in Ecuador / Adrián Bonilla and Nashira Chávez -- A special kind of hell: the Bolivian penal system / Marten W. Brienen -- Drugs and the prison crisis in Peru / Lucía Dammert and Manuel Dammert G. -- Beyond overcrowding: the decline of the Brazilian penitentiary system / Marcelo Rocha e Silva Zorovich -- The drug-crime-prison nexus: what the U.S. experience suggests for Argentina / Khatchik DerGhougassian and Sebastián A. Cutrona -- Prison reform: an international solution / W. Andy Knight.