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The Waiting Room  By  cover art

The Waiting Room

By: Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve
Narrated by: Almarie Guerra
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Publisher's summary

It’s easy to get lost in Chicago’s Cook County Jail, the size of seventy-two football fields. For many released into the harsh elements beyond the walls, it can be impossible to find their way home.

This haunting and powerful narrative reveals the intentionally disorienting tactics of the system and how the punishments meted out to prisoners, their families, and even innocent victims extend beyond the cages. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, the award-winning author of Crook Country, exposes the moral, spiritual, legal, and psychological wasteland - inside and out - of the nation’s largest jail.

Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve’s The Waiting Room is part of Southside, a collection of five true stories about racism and reform, crime and corruption, justice and injustice in Chicago - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning team at The Marshall Project. Each story can be listened to in a single sitting.

©2018 Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved

What listeners say about The Waiting Room

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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When waiting is losing

I loved the descriptive flow of the story, how the Cook County Jail experience makes an inmate feel insignificant. It's mainly about all the little things one goes through when processing out. Everything seems to involve a period of waiting in a state of not knowing how long the wait will take. All the waiting, when combined, feels overwhelming.

The author shows that the jail has some seriously mean people working there. Some inmates are violent offenders while others aren't, but they're all treated with the same contempt. There were parts that explained how these employees actually go out of their way to increase the waiting time of inmates.

Why does the Chicago jail force inmates to wait longer than any other jail for every single thing? The author described how the jail came into existence, that the local politicians wanted this big jail because it brought jobs.



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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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Prison waiting

A person thoughts of the how and why of Chicago prison system works and for those waiting on those getting out on bail.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Chicago jail or prison is awful

short interesting news piece about Chicago jail and it's utter dysfunction. and here's some added words so I can post this.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Not A novel

It didn't really go anywhere I kept expecting for something exciting to happen but it didn't,

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