Most books’ publication dates fall on Tuesdays. That’s just the industry standard. So the fact that Curtis Dawkins’ debut story collection, “The Graybar Hotel,” had July 4 as its official release date is not that surprising; the Fourth of July happened to land on a Tuesday. Rather, the irony lies in that Independence Day should be the launch date for a book by a man who will theoretically never be free.

Dawkins, a Louisville, Ill., native who earned his master’s degree in fiction writing from Western Michigan University in 2000, is serving life without the possibility of parole at the Michigan Reformatory in Ionia, Mich., for a drug-related homicide he committed during a home invasion in 2004. In the acknowledgments, he admits and expresses remorse for his crime: “The night I killed a man was a horrible ordeal, especially for his family, my family — everyone traumatized by my actions. I still struggle with guilt and sorrow. There’s often so much sadness and grief in my heart, it feels like I might explode.”

Almost every one of the 14 short stories in the collection seems to have originated from something Dawkins experienced or witnessed behind bars, and almost every one reflects with devastating compassion on the guilt and regrets of the criminals inside. In “Sunshine,” he writes, “When you’re separated from the people you know and love, every emotion is multiplied. ... We were all responsible for being there, of course — none of us were innocent. But that only makes you feel worse.”

“A Human Number” takes as its subject a prisoner so consumed by loneliness that he places collect calls to strangers simply to connect with people outside: “You’re supposed to record your name, so when the person picks up, the generic computer operator asks if you will accept a call from so-and-so from jail. Mine says, Hey, it’s me. Just something I came up with. Not many people know someone with my name, but everyone knows a me.”

In “573543” — whose title comes from Dawkins’ prisoner number — a man receives the number of another inmate who had died, this detail of impersonal bureaucracy speaking volumes about the bleak texture of life within such a vast, harsh system. “According to the Department of Corrections,” he writes, “the prisoner has been ‘released by death.’?”

In perhaps the best story in the collection for its inextricable mix of humor and sadness, “Engulfed,” a prisoner makes a list of 152 of his fellow inmate’s lies, including “Julia Roberts was a penpal” and “He died twice and met God both times.”

Besides the prison setting, the constant that binds these stories together is the atrocious tedium and isolation of an imprisoned existence — the monotony of being locked away from free society in the name of punishment.

It’s hard to read “The Graybar Hotel” and not think about the prison crisis in America, with 2.3 million people behind bars, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, an advocacy group seeking reforms to address mass incarceration. Also about the fact that white people make up 64 percent of the U.S. population but only 39 percent of the incarcerated population, whereas black people make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but 40 percent of the incarcerated one.

It’s hard, too, not to wonder about the privilege of the author, a white man, and consider how many other incarcerated authors — perhaps people of color, perhaps women, perhaps both — might be struggling to have their voices heard.

And that maybe is the biggest benefit of this book’s existence. It’s well-written and worth reading for Dawkins’ craft and insight, but it’s also an occasion to consider an industry that has little to do with rehabilitation and that makes it nearly impossible for its participants to recuperate their lives. As Dawkins himself says on the book’s final page: “I pray that we all find forgiveness, freedom, and peace. Inside and out.”

Kathleen Rooney is a freelance writer and the author, most recently, of the novel “Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk.”