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....

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....

In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners.

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....

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

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....

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....

Every day, innocent men across America are thrown into prison, betrayed by a faulty justice system, and robbed of their lives - either by decades-long sentences or the death penalty itself....

Over the course of five years, Elizabeth Greenwood followed the ups and downs of five couples who met during incarceration. In Love Lockdown, she pulls back the curtain on the lives of the husbands and wives supporting some of the 2.3 million people in prisons....

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....

What's Prison For? examines the “incarceration” part of mass incarceration. Our prisons remain a shameful waste of lives and money, feeding a pathological cycle of poverty, community dysfunction, crime and hopelessness....

In the tradition of Just Mercy, an inspirational memoir by WNBA star Maya Moore Irons and her husband, Jonathan Irons, who she helped free from a wrongful conviction....

How did the "land of the free" become the home of the world's largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America's prison problem originated with the Reagan administration....

Not until now has there been a memoir of life inside the Soviet Gulag camps written from the perspective of an actual employee of the Secret police....

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....

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing is the story of Ted Conover's rookie year as a guard at Sing Sing....

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....

In 1945 seven of Hitler's henchmen were incarcerated as solitary inmates of the vast Spandau prison in Berlin originally built to accommodate hundreds. Every conceivable precaution was taken to ensure escape was impossible for such high-profile prisoners.

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

In Captive in Iran, Maryam and Marziyeh recount their 259 days in Evin. It’s an amazing story of unyielding faith - when denying God would have meant freedom....

For the first time, the four most popular restorative justice audiobooks in the Justice & Peacebuilding series are available in one audio volume.

An empowering memoir of courage and hope in the face of injustice, Marked for Life is the true story of Isaac Wright Jr.’s battle to win his freedom after being wrongfully imprisoned for crimes he didn’t commit, and a critical indictment of America’s judicial system....