ABSTRACT
Not long ago I was driving to a federal penitentiary in the Midwestern United States, in connection with a legal case on which I was working. Like many maximum-security prisons in the United States, this one is located in a rural area, surrounded by farmland and little else. After you leave the interstate highway and travel down several country roads, you turn onto an even smaller road that leads directly to the prison grounds. Just at the corner where you make this last turn to enter the prison sits a small, white church–quaint and picturesque. It is a kind of landmark relied upon by people like myself who only travel there sporadically. ‘Make sure you look for the white church’, more experienced visitors always tell you, knowing that, if you miss it, you may be lost for quite some time before you make your way back to the prison.
