Criminal Justice Reform

Jesus told his followers that the entirety of the Old Testament’s law is encapsulated in the commands to love God and to love their neighbors as themselves. In Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal, Matthew T. Martens argues that love of neighbor must be the animating force for true reformation of the criminal justice system, obligating us to seek the best for both the criminally victimized and the criminally accused.

In his impassioned-yet-measured book, Rafael A. Mangual offers an incisive critique of America's increasingly radical criminal justice reform movement, and makes a convincing case against the pursuit of "justice" through mass-decarceration and depolicing. After a summer of violent protests in...

Despite reform efforts that have grown in scope and intensity over the last two decades, the machine of American mass incarceration continues to flourish. In this powerful polemic, formerly incarcerated activist, essayist, and organizer Emile Suotonye DeWeaver argues that the root of the problem is white supremacy.

The explosive true story of America's most corrupt police unit, the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), which terrorized the city of Baltimore for half a decade. When Baltimore police sergeant Wayne Jenkins said he had a monster, he meant he had found a big-time drug dealer—one that he wanted to rob...

An accessible guide for activists, educators, and all who are interested in understanding how the prison system oppresses communities and harms individuals. The United States incarcerates more of its residents than any other nation. Though home to 5% of the global population, the United States...

Locked In is a revelatory investigation into the root causes of mass incarceration by one of the most exciting scholars in the country. Having spent 15 years studying the data on imprisonment, John Pfaff takes apart the reigning consensus created by Michelle Alexander and other reformers, revealing that the most widely accepted explanations - the failed War on Drugs, draconian sentencing laws, an increasing reliance on private prisons - tell us much less than we think.

Vincent Schiraldi was New York City probation commissioner under Mayor Bloomberg, supervising a system charged with monitoring 30,000 people on a daily basis. In Mass Supervision, he combines firsthand experience with deep research on the inadequately explored practices of probation and parole, to illustrate how these forms of state supervision have strayed from their original goal of providing constructive and rehabilitative alternatives to prison. They have become instead, Schiraldi argues, a "recidivism trap" for people trying to lead productive lives in the wake of a criminal conviction.

From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Gilbert King comes a chilling exploration of one of America’s most haunting wrongful conviction cases. Based on the hit podcast, Bone Valley dives into the dark heart of rural Florida, where a young man’s life was upended by a tragic miscarriage of...

James Comey, former FBI Director and New York Times bestselling author of A Higher Loyalty, uses his long career in federal law enforcement to explore issues of justice and fairness in the US justice system. James Comey might best be known as the FBI director that Donald Trump fired in 2017, but...

How can we be proud of a system of justice that often pressures the innocent to plead guilty? How can we claim that justice is equal when we imprison thousands of poor Black men for relatively modest crimes but rarely prosecute rich white executives who commit crimes having far greater impact? Federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff, a leading authority on white-collar crime, explores these and other puzzles in Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free, a startling account of our broken legal system.

American policing stands at a critical crossroads. Traditional tactics generate preventable tragedies, erode community trust, and leave officers inadequately prepared for modern threats. Meanwhile, the U.S. military has undergone a parallel transformation—evolving from "shock and awe" to surgical precision in response to similar challenges in urban counterinsurgency operations. This groundbreaking work demonstrates how military precision doctrine, developed to minimize civilian casualties while achieving tactical objectives, can revolutionize American law enforcement. Precision Policing: ...

Unlock the intricate dynamics of justice with "Punishment and Rehabilitation," an illuminating journey through the philosophies, histories, and modern practices shaping criminal justice today. From the dawn of punitive measures to the rise of rehabilitative approaches, this eBook meticulously dissects the evolution of punishment and its reformative counterparts. Begin with a foundational overview in the Introduction to Justice and Reform, where the evolving philosophies and definitions of both punishment and rehabilitation set the stage. Delve into the rich History of Punishment and ...

What if everything you think you know about crime and punishment is just one moment in a much longer—and stranger—story? And what if understanding that story is the key to reimagining justice today? You live in a world of police, prisons, and headlines about crime waves and crackdowns, yet so much of it feels confusing, unfair, or out of control. Debates about safety, reform, and justice are loud and polarized, while the deeper questions—What is a crime? Who gets punished, and why?—rarely get answered. Without a bigger historical view, it’s easy to feel stuck between fear and ...

A blueprint for criminal justice reform that lays the foundation for how model public defense programs should work to end mass incarceration. Combining wisdom drawn from over a dozen years as a public defender and cutting-edge research in the fields of organizational and cultural psychology...

A Collection of True Stories of Redemption and Transformation In a world that often writes people off after their worst mistakes, CONVICTED presents 52 extraordinary true stories that prove no life is beyond redemption. From death row to maximum security, from gang leaders to corporate executives, these accounts reveal how the darkest places can become sacred ground for profound transformation. This powerful collection explores incredible transformations, including: • A Washington power broker who went from being the President's "hatchet man" to founding the world's largest prison ...

In June 1985, a young Black man named Darryl Hunt was falsely convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a white copyeditor at the local paper. Many in the community believed him innocent and crusaded for his release even as subsequent trials and appeals reinforced his sentence. Finally, in 2003, the tireless efforts of his attorney combined with an award-winning series of articles by Phoebe Zerwick in the Winston-Salem Journal led to the DNA evidence that exonerated Hunt.

When violence meets violence, what does justice actually demand? In December 2024, Luigi Mangione was arrested for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Within weeks, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced federal prosecutors would seek the death penalty...making Mangione the test case for the Trump administration's revived capital punishment agenda. The internet erupted. Some celebrated Mangione as a folk hero striking back against a predatory healthcare system. Others demanded his execution. Both responses missed everything that matters. The People v. Luigi Mangione refuses ...

A "persuasive and essential" (Matthew Desmond) work that will forever change how we look at life after prison in America through Miller's "stunning, and deeply painful reckoning with our nation's carceral system" (Heather Ann Thompson). Each year, more than half a million Americans are released...

How states are making their legal systems more equitable, seen through the story of a Black man falsely imprisoned for thirty years for murder. In 1987, Ben Spencer, a twenty-two-year-old Black man from Dallas, was convicted of murdering white businessman Jeffrey Young—a crime he didn’t...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 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. “An important, thoughtful, and thorough examination of criminal justice in America that...