Penology

John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction: a true crime story that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence....

The Sun Does Shine is an arresting audiobook memoir of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading, written by a man who spent 30 years on death row for a crime he didn't commit....

A leading authority on sheriffs in America investigates the impunity with which sheriffs police their communities, alongside the troubling role they play in American life, law enforcement, and, increasingly, national politics....

Shaka Senghor was raised in a middle-class neighborhood on Detroit’s east side during the height of the 1980s crack epidemic. An honor roll student and a natural leader, he dreamed of becoming a doctor—but at age eleven, his parents’ marriage began to unravel....

In The Faithful Executioner, Harrington vividly re-creates a life filled with stark contrasts, from the young apprentice's rigorous training under his executioner father....

With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money 10 years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to 15 months at an infamous federal correctional facility....

On February 28, 2013, after pleading guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, John Kiriakou began serving a 30 month prison sentence. His crime: blowing the whistle on the CIA's use of torture on al Qaeda prisoners....

Dan Slepian, a veteran producer for NBC’s Dateline recounts his two-decade journey navigating the broken criminal justice system to help free six innocent men.

With her characteristic brilliance, grace, and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration," and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole....

The incredible true story of one of the most extraordinary and inspirational prison breaks in history....

Famed as the ultimate penalty for traitors, heretics, and royalty alike, being sent to the Tower is known to have been experienced by no less than 8,000 unfortunate souls....

A renowned journalist and legal commentator exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America’s mass incarceration crisis - and charts a way out....

On September 9, 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners took over the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York to protest years of mistreatment....

After working as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison, Shane Bauer wrote an exposé about his experiences. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America....

Edward Humes creates an unforgettable portrait of a chaotic system that is neither saving our children in danger nor protecting us from adolescent violence....

This revelatory account that unjustly brands millions of Americans as criminals offers an urgent new interpretation of inequality and injustice in America by examining the paradigmatic American offense: the lowly misdemeanor....

Each day we saw the outside world in all its splendour, and each day that view served as a reminder that we had wasted and ruined our lives....

Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency....

Today it is known as Roosevelt Island. In 1828, when New York City purchased this narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River, it was called Blackwell's Island. There, over the next hundred years, the city would build a lunatic asylum, prison, hospital, workhouse, and almshouse....

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison....

Old Sparky covers the history of capital punishment in America and the "current wars" between Edison and Westinghouse, which led to the development of the electric chair....

Detailing the development of the prison and its outlying stations, including its dreaded coal mines and providing an account of the changing views to convict rehabilitation, Convict-Era Port Arthur focuses in on a number of individuals, telling the story through their eyes....

A former parole officer shines a bright light on a huge yet hidden part of our justice system through the intertwining stories of seven parolees striving to survive the chaos that awaits them after prison in this illuminating and dramatic audiobook....

The Native American activist recounts his evolution into a political organizer, his trial and conviction for murder, and his spiritual journey in prison.

City of Inmates explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world's leading incarcerator. Historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez unmasks how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, and Black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration....