Walking George: The Life of George John Beto and the Rise of the Modern Texas Prison System.

Walking George: The Life of George John Beto and the Rise of the Modern Texas Prison System. By David M. Horton and George R. Nielsen. North Texas Crime and Criminal Justice. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, c. 2005. Pp. xii, 257. $29.95, ISBN 1-57441-199-3.)

George John Beto enjoyed a distinguished career as a Lutheran minister, college professor and president, and, most significant, as the legendary director of the Texas Department of Corrections from 1962 to 1972. In this welcome addition to existing literature pertaining to the modernization of southern penal institutions during the civil rights era, David M. Horton and George R. Nielsen cover every important period of their subject's life, beginning with his birth in Montana and his youth in the Midwest. The erudite Beto, who held a doctorate in educational administration, adroitly utilized his interpersonal, public relations, and political abilities to achieve international renown in penal administration circles.

In a smoothly constructed narrative, the authors effectively highlight Beto's many accomplishments as a penologist. Although he continued the Texas system's plantation labor practices, he also greatly expanded the prison industrial plant and dramatically improved inmate educational opportunities and raised employee education and training requirements. In addition to racially desegregating prison units, Beto hired the system's first African American staff members.

The authors softly criticize Beto's failure to anticipate future growth in the prisoner population that would require the construction of additional correctional facilities. Certain elements of "Walking George's" charismatic style depended upon the existence of insular, modest-sized prison communities. His regular visits to each prison unit and personal interactions with individual inmates would have been impossible at the end of the twentieth century when the number of prisoners exceeded one hundred thousand. Horton and Nielsen are less critical of Beto's stubborn defiance of federal judicial intervention in state prisons that began during the civil rights era of the 1960s, although they concede that he was "[t]he most sued man in Texas" (p. 146). In fact, the famous Ruiz v. Estelle case, the longest-running prisoner lawsuit in the nation's history, was initially a class-action suit filed against Beto just two months prior to his retirement in 1972. Federal courts across the country have since declared unconstitutional Beto's "control model" of repressive prison management.

The authors draw on an impressive array of sources, including Beto's papers, official records and documents, interviews with Beto family members and acquaintances, journalistic accounts, and the authors' personal recollections from their days as his students. Horton and Nielsen really do not ask if the realities of prison life during the Beto regime equaled Beto's rhetoric of "rehabilitation," humane treatment, and compassion. However, they concede that his defense of the state's use of convict "building tenders" as guards was "out of step with Beto's general philosophy and with the evolving standards of contemporary prisoner treatment" (p. 142).

Perhaps Beto's most enduring achievement was the relationship that he cultivated between the prison system and Sam Houston State University. Following his retirement as director, he joined the university faculty where he played a huge role in building "the largest criminal justice education and training program in the English-speaking world" (pp. 157-58). While he had adopted a personality-driven management style as a prison administrator, as a prescient educator he accurately predicted a bureaucratic future that would demand highly trained professionals.

PAUL M. LUCKO

Murray State University