Justice System

Vernell LaQuan Banks and Justyce McAllister grew up a block apart in the Southwest Atlanta neighborhood of Wynwood Heights. Years later, though, Justyce walks the illustrious halls of Yale University...and Quan sits behind bars at the Fulton Regional Youth Detention Center. Through a series of flashbacks, vignettes, and letters to Justyce - the protagonist of Dear Martin - Quan's story takes form.

A former public defender takes us behind the closed doors of America's criminal courts, revealing how the institutions that claim to protect us are doing the exact opposite—and offering a blueprint for finally fixing it.

AI and other high-tech tools embed and reinforce America’s history of prejudice and exclusion — even when they are used with the best intentions. Patrick K. Lin’s Machine See, Machine Do: How Technology Mirrors Bias in Our Criminal Justice System takes a deep and thorough look into the use of technology in the criminal justice system, and investigates the instances of coded bias present at every level.

Have you ever wondered what a judge is really thinking? To most people, judges are mysterious creatures. Judge Mader shines a bright spotlight on the hidden folds of the judging world. The old saying is that judges merely "follow the law". Yet following the law can produce wildly different results depending upon each judge's background, politics, and life experiences. Even the floor of the courthouse to which a case is assigned can mean the difference between prison and freedom. Never before has the judging world been laid bare for all to see.

A troubled 21-year-old turned Columbia County, Oregon upside down within 14 minutes. January 5,2011 was about to be the last day of Ralph Painter’s life. There was no way the laid-back fun-loving Rainier Police Chief could have foreseen what was about to happen. What seemed like an average police call, to a man attempting to steal a car, turned into a gut-wrenching event. It's one that paralyzed a small Oregon town, and garnered nationwide attention. Author Rosemary Reynolds looks deep into the investigation and the evolution of one of Oregon’s longest untried court cases.

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Gilbert King also narrates this 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...

On a summer night in 1984, 19-year-old UC Berkeley sophomore Karen Thomas leaves her uniformed patrol job at the University of California Police Department and walks home alone in darkness. At the threshold of her apartment a man assaults her at knife point. After a soul chilling struggle she manages to escape and call 911. Police catch her assailant, she identifies him, and he is arrested. Fast forward 2014, 30 years after her assault. Why does the body remember what the mind tries so desperately to forget?

Based on exclusive new information, Submerged, a compelling true crime drama, exposes hidden angles of a case that captivated and divided an ordinary American community, tore apart two families, and tested the criminal justice system. Compelled by conscience and curiosity, former Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Janice (Morse) Hisle - who covered the saga of Ryan and Sarah Widmer from the start - returns 10 years later to dig deep to tell the untold story

Acts of Supremacy traces the ugly, and harrowing details of my Court-martial in the Spring of 1990, after I had annoyed an admiral who then orchestrated a full-on, "50 to 1" campaign against me. Further, it describes how our system of military justice initially came about, the various years of appeal that I pursued to attempt to secure an exoneration from these charges, the crime of forgery that took place during the course of the Court-martial itself (an act which today is still unprosecuted), and finally, what concrete steps of reform might be put in place so that a greater, transparent system of military justice might be achieved for all future sailors and soldiers, so that they do not have to endure what I did.

Ever wonder about how the federal justice system really works? Now you can experience it, really feel it, up close and personal. Welcome to Matt Connolly's world. It starts with the Libor investigation into Deutsche Bank, followed by Matts interview with the FBI. Then comes his indictment and a trial in the country's most prestigious federal court, the Southern District of New York in Manhattan. This book pulls no punches. Every rabbit hole is plumbed; every lie, backstab, and shady deal is exposed. You may be surprised at which side is pulling the strings.

The Plea of Innocence offers a fundamental reform of the adversarial system: plausibly innocent people may now plead innocent and require the government to search for exonerating facts; in return, they will be required to waive their right to remain silent, speak to government agents, and participate in a search for truth. While almost all the participants within the system hope that only guilty people will be convicted, the unfortunate reality is that innocent people are convicted and imprisoned at an alarming rate.

The United States incarcerates more of its residents than any other nation. Though home to five percent of the global population, the United States has nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners - a total of over two million people. This number continues to steadily rise. Over the past 40 years, the number of people behind bars in the United States has increased by 500 percent.

Powell and Silverglate shine a light on the defects of the federal criminal-justice system: overzealous prosecutors, perjury traps, negligent judges, perverse limits on self-defense, vague and overabundant criminal statutes, insufficient requirements for criminal intent, and no accountability for prosecutors. Most important, they provide a much-needed blueprint for reforming the Department of Justice and the criminal-justice system, including actions an average citizen can take to help restore justice.

When The New Press, the Center for American Progress, and the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Peoples and Family Movement issued a call for innovative reform ideas, over 300 currently and formerly incarcerated individuals responded. What We Know collects two dozen of their best suggestions, each of which proposes a policy solution derived from their own lived experience.

Michael served in the British Army during the troubles, serving nearly six years in Northern Ireland before entering the prison service of England and Wales as a uniformed officer, working his way up to become a Deputy Governor with over 20 years operational experience.

In 2018, after nearly a decade's hiatus, the state of Tennessee began executing death row inmates, bucking national trends that showed the death penalty in decline. In less than two years, the state put seven men to death. It was an execution spree unlike any seen in Tennessee since the 1940s, only brought to a halt by a global pandemic. Award-winning journalist Steven Hale was the leading reporter on these executions, covering them both locally for the Nashville Scene alt-weekly and nationally for The Appeal.

Seventeen years old and facing nearly 30 years behind bars, Jarrett Adams sought to figure out the why behind his fate. Sustained by his mother and aunts who brought him back from the edge of despair through letters of prayer and encouragement, Adams became obsessed with our legal system in all its damaged glory. After studying how his constitutional rights to effective counsel had been violated, he solicited the help of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, an organization that exonerates the wrongfully convicted, and won his release after nearly 10 years in prison.

How can you keep your faith in people after seeing the flaws of the American justice system? Juror #11 exposes the flaws and weaknesses in the American justice system from the perspective of a murder trial juror who endured months of trauma, the threat of jail, and thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees because of them.

Through this remarkable true account story the author has tried to bring up and discuss a number of issues focusing on “Justice in America - is it truly for everyone?”

The War on Cops exposes the truth about officer use of force and explodes the conceit of "mass incarceration". A rigorous analysis of data shows that crime, not race, drives police actions and prison rates. The growth of proactive policing in the 1990s, along with lengthened sentences for violent crime, saved thousands of minority lives. In fact, Mac Donald argues, no government agency is more dedicated to the proposition that "black lives matter" than today's data-driven, accountable police department.