Justice Reform

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...

Sid challenges the current property tax system as inherently regressive, arguing that it disproportionately burdens middle-class homeowners while favoring the wealthy. He paints a picture of the system as a significant annual burden for many, particularly for seniors and minorities who may be forced out of their neighborhoods due to rising property taxes. Sid proposes a comprehensive overhaul of the tax system, replacing property taxes with middle-class-friendly, progressive alternatives. His proposed reforms include various consumption taxes to redistribute the tax burden more equitably, ...

An eye-opening exploration of American policy reform, or lack thereof, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement and how the country can do better in the future from Fredrik deBoer, “one of the sharpest and funniest writers on the internet” (The New York...

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...

What do you do when divine law and the justice demanded by your conscience clash? Muslims have wrestled with this problem since the earliest caliphates. The mazalim courts, dating back to the eighth century, were the answer: courts where any subject could appeal directly to an Islamic ruler regarding any matter of justice. Mazalim courts, which were not bound by the rulings of an established school of Islamic law, could address crises in authority and order that Sharia courts could not.

An acclaimed legal scholar exposes the Supreme Court’s increasing use of unsigned, unexplained orders to change the law—all behind closed doors The Supreme Court has always had the authority to issue emergency rulings in exceptional circumstances. But since 2017, the Court has dramatically...

They began as witnesses and became a movement. In Women of Freedom, nineteenth-century women turned faith into reform and reform into rights—redefining conscience as the nation’s truest revolution. Women of Freedom: Pioneers of Conscience in 19th-Century America How Nineteenth-Century Women Turned Faith into Reform and Reform into Rights They began as witnesses and became a movement. From the meetinghouses of Philadelphia to the lecture halls of Chicago, Women of Freedom traces how faith, education, and moral courage reshaped the conscience of a nation. Through vivid portraits of ...

Nicole Daedone entered federal custody on charges tied to her life’s work—the teaching of Orgasmic Meditation—and found herself inside the “belly of the beast,” the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. What she encounters there is a nation’s shadow made visible, and within it, an unexpected field of grace. Daedone meets women of immense courage and wit—OGs, hustlers, ministers, mystics—and even correctional officers whose quiet humanity breaks through the steel divide. Each holds a fragment of forgotten wisdom. Together, they turn the fluorescent corridors of ...

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...

40-year experience and investigation of the criminal justice system to find a solution to the nation's crime problem. Authors criminal justice education and skills span 40 years beginning in college and concluding in the present, with a compelling, urgent call for action. Building a persuasive case, the author's journey includes his extensive criminal justice career, beginning in college studying criminology during the Carter administration. In 1976 he turned in his "Crime Problem" thesis detailing what was wrong what needed to be fixed. He then went work in almost all aspects of in the ...

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 ...

The Many Faces of Incarceration: From Punishment to Restoration offers a deeply personal and theological exploration of the modern prison system. Drawing on nearly 25 years of experience in prison ministry, Geoffrey Schmitt examines incarceration through multiple lenses: punishment, deterrence, incapacitation, reform, restorative justice, social control, and spiritual transformation. Each chapter combines scriptural reflection, real-life stories, poetry, and thoughtful questions for reflection, inviting readers to see the incarcerated not as statistics but as human beings made in the image ...

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.

Trauma from abuse can crush your spirit unless you confront your enemies. After years of stuffing her emotions, putting on a happy face, and enduring hardship like a good airman, Jakia Lindley realized she needed to stand toe-to-toe against her foes. She needed to fight back.

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...

Named a Best Book of 2021 by NPR This inspirational memoir serves as a call to action from prison reform activist Yusef Salaam, of the Exonerated Five, that will inspire us all to turn our stories into tools for change in the pursuit of racial justice. They didn't know who they had. So begins...

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...

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...

Electronic monitoring. Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data-driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost-effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But many of these so-called reforms actually widen the net, weaving in new strands of punishment and control, and bringing new populations, who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment, under physical control by the state.

In Get Off My Neck, Debbie Hines draws on her unique perspective as a trial lawyer, former Baltimore prosecutor, and assistant attorney general for the State of Maryland to argue that US prosecutors, as the most powerful players in the criminal justice system, systematically target and criminalize Black people. Hines describes her disillusionment as a young Black woman who initially entered the profession with the goal of helping victims of crimes, only to discover herself aiding and abetting a system that prizes plea bargaining, speedy conviction, and excessive punishment above all else.