Jimmy Santiago Baca's story of his imprisonment is, in fact, a demonstration of the total failure of the entire system of which prisons are a part. That is not a failure of that system to "serve" Jimmy or others like him, or the broader society of which they and all of us are a part. Rather it is failure of the system at issue to do exactly what it is designed to do, even if there were never any conscious designers. It is the failure to that system to disempower those to whom it applies itself.