People behind bars: How do they live? What does their everyday life look like? And what exactly happens in prison "in the name of the people"? Do we even want to know what happens to people after they have been convicted as criminals and locked away? And what about the women and men who serve as staff in the institutions - often also for life? Joachim Walter was, among other things, deputy head of the Stuttgart-Stammheim prison and head of the juvenile penal system in Pforzheim and Adelsheim. From his decades of professional experience, he tells lively but always true stories about the people in prison - prisoners as well as servants - and leaves it to the readers to form their own judgement about the sense and nonsense of the prison system. With facts and figures about the German prison system that we should all know.