Justice System

The US has the largest criminal justice system in the world. Because they spend enough time in prison to disrupt their connections to their families and their communities, they are not prepared for the difficult and often life-threatening process of reentry. As a result, the percentage of these people who return to a life of crime and additional prison time escalates each year. Beyond Bars is the most current, practical, and comprehensive guide for ex-convicts and their families about managing a successful reentry into the community.

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.

More people than ever are getting arrested - usually for petty offenses against laws that rarely used to be enforced. This eye-opening book tells you everything you need to know about how cops operate, the little things that can get you in trouble, and how to stay free from the hungry jaws of the criminal justice system. It is now updated with new and important information on the right of the police to search your car; on guns, knives, and self-defense; and on changes in surveillance methods.

Crimes and violations of the law require punishment, and our legal system is set up to punish, but what if the system was recalibrated to also weigh grounds for forgiveness? What if something like bankruptcy - a fresh start for debtors - were available to people convicted of crimes? Martha Minow explores the complicated intersection of the law, justice, and forgiveness, asking whether the law should encourage people to forgive, and when courts, public officials, and specific laws should forgive.

From New York Times bestselling author and former top prosecutor Linda Fairstein comes an electrifying thriller rich with the riveting behind-the-scenes authenticity that only she can offer. It’s going to be a tough trial. Manhattan sex-crimes prosecutor Alexandra Cooper’s case, involving an...

From a Bancroft Prize-winning historian, a revelatory new account of slavery, uncovering a surprising web of relationships between Black and white people that ranges far beyond the familiar template of “master-slave” dynamics A white man hosts a wedding party for his Black servant and finds...

From award-winning sociologist Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve comes the first account of mass wrongful conviction in America, indicting a system purposefully designed to ensnare Black youth in order to close cases Wrongful convictions have long been dismissed as rare exceptions to an otherwise...

Deciding if a prisoner should stay in prison or be released is no mean feat. Enter the fascinating world of the parole board with Rob McKeon of BBC’s Parole. …You don’t know what you don’t know. How can you predict the future when you don’t know what you don’t know? Rob McKeon is a...

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson insisted that "the policeman is the frontline soldier in our war against crime", and police forces, arms makers, policy makers, and crime experts heeded this call to arms, bringing weapons and practices from the arena of war back home. The Punitive Turn in American Life offers a political and cultural history of the ways in which punishment and surveillance have moved to the center of American life and become imbued with militarized language and policies.

The courthouse is an important part of every story of mass incarceration in America and, too often, it is a place of powerlessness for those facing criminal charges, their families, and their communities. But the courthouse can also be an important site of resistance, a place where Americans affected by incarceration can become agents of change—even though they are not lawyers or judges.

Courtroom 302 is the fascinating story of one year in Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courthouse, the busiest felony courthouse in the country. Here we see the system through the eyes of the men and women who experience it, not only in the courtroom but in the lockup, the jury room, the judge's chambers, the spectators' gallery. From the daily grind of the court to the highest-profile case of the year, Steve Bogira's masterful investigation raises fundamental issues of race, civil rights, and justice in America.

America’s criminal justice system perpetuates profound social and racial harms. But despite growing recognition of its destructiveness, the vast machinery of the carceral state remains very much intact. How can its damage be undone? In this pathbreaking reader, three of the nation’s leading advocates for change provide us with tools to move from critique to action and from despair to hope. Dismantling Mass Incarceration surveys various approaches to confronting the carceral state, exploring a wide range of bold but practical interventions.

A "profound", heart-wrenching story of violence, grief, and the American justice system, explored through the story of one teenager (Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted). In September of 2019, Luis Alberto Quiñonez—known as Sito— was shot to death as he sat in his car...

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.

Hidden Behind the Robe is a tapestry of stranger-than-fiction scenes, observed over Matt Graham’s 43-year career in the criminal justice system. The story traverses the unexplored and overlooked inner workings of the raunchy, salacious, often hilarious, behind-the-scenes happenings of Los Angeles justice. Combining issues of privilege, race, and sexual misconduct, Hidden Behind the Robe provides a raw, behind-the-scenes perspective, and insight into the legal system that could only have been written by a Judge who has seen it all.

Family group conferences (FGCs) are the primary forum in New Zealand for dealing with juvenile crime, as well as child welfare issues. This third volume in the Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding Series is about the juvenile justice system that is built around these conferences. Since their introduction in New Zealand, family group conferences have been adopted and adapted in many places throughout the world.

Seattle attorney and media legal analyst Anne Bremner takes us inside some of the biggest cases of recent times and offers her expert insights and analysis as our legal system faces unprecedented forces fighting to tip the scales of justice their way. Justice in the Age of Judgement is Bremner’s unparalleled and unflinching look at the captivating cases tried on Twitter and TV, where the burden of proof and fundamental legal tenet of “innocent until proven guilty” is under assault from the court of public opinion.

This program is read by the author. “Uplifting. . . . O’Rourke gets an A-plus on both the moral frisson of the long fight and the rightness of the cause. . . . The happy warrior from Texas is inspiring.” --The Washington Post Activist and political leader Beto O’Rourke blends history...

In The Uninnocent, Blake wrestles with the implications of her cousin's break, as well as the broken machinations of America's justice system. As her cousin languished in a cell on death row, where he was assigned for his own protection, Blake struggled to keep her faith in the system she was training to join.

A revealing audiobook about how government, law enforcement, and bureaucratic interests are seizing our property, our children, our savings, and our fundamental American rights—and how to fight back. Liberty and justice for all is the bedrock of American democracy, but has America betrayed our...