To a Correctional Facility in Virginia, he is known as “Prisoner 179212,” but to a legion of journalists and legal reform activists he is Jens Soering, a German citizen who endured for more than three decades the harshest and most unforgiving punishment this country can offer—the American prison system. Told with dry humor and trenchant wit, One Day in the Life of 179212 provides an hour-by-hour survey of everyday life in a medium-security facility with all of its attendant hardships, contradictions, and even revelations.

Soering poignantly illustrates the importance of meditation and faith when confronted with extreme adversity, as well as the indisputable need for prison reform. Although this inspiring, eloquent memoir recounts just a day in the life of one man, it provides a powerful voice for the over two million men and women lost in the maze of America’s prison-industrial complex.