Criminal Justice System

From CSI to Forensic Files to the celebrated reputation of the FBI crime lab, forensic scientists have long been mythologized in American popular culture as infallible crime solvers. Juries put their faith in “expert witnesses” and innocent people have been executed as a result. Innocent people are still on death row today, condemned by junk science.

‘A bracing account of abuses of power and corruption in the criminal justice system.’ The Guardian From the fearless defense attorney and civil rights lawyer who rose to fame with Netflix’s The Staircase comes an essential examination of America’s corrupt and abusive criminal justice...

Indigenous Justice is Book 10 in the Durvile True Cases series. In the spirit of truth and reconciliation and respectful of Indigenous cultural integrity, judges, lawyers, and law enforcement officers write about working with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples through their trials and tribulations with the criminal justice system. The stories are a mix of previously published essays from the True Cases anthologies with an equal number of new chapters by legal and law enforcement professionals.

Based on first-hand interviews with survivors, people who have committed offences, and others on the frontlines, Indictment puts the Canadian criminal justice system on trial and proposes a bold new vision of transformative justice.

Dauntless journalist Julie K. Brown recounts her uncompromising and risky investigation of Jeffrey Epstein's underage sex trafficking operation, and the explosive reporting for the Miami Herald that finally brought him to justice while exposing the powerful people and broken system that...

An anonymous barrister's darkly comic and moving first-hand account of life in the legal system, and how it's failing us all. The Sunday Times number one bestseller. Winner of the Books are My Bag Non-Fiction Award. Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year. Shortlisted for Specsavers...

'Compelling, urgent and devastating. A triumph' The Secret Barrister 'Funny, heart-breaking and utterly authentic' Dr Amanda Brown, author of THE PRISON DOCTOR 'A breath-taking account of the UK's crumbling prison system. Every politician and decision-maker involved in our prisons should be...

Interweaving an insider’s account of the true crime saga driving Netflix sensation Making a Murderer with other controversial cases from his career, this powerful memoir from Steven Avery’s defense attorney reveals the flaws in America's criminal justice system and puts forth a provocative...

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 “A must-read reckoning with past and present alike.”—Heather Ann Thompson...

Bloomsbury presents Justice on Trial written and read by Chris Daw QC. 'Chris is a powerful force for good in the national debate on criminal justice.' –The Secret Barrister 'Extraordinary' – Krishnan Guru-Murthy Chris Daw QC has been practising criminal law for over 25 years, navigating...

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...

“A gripping, big-hearted thriller . . . whip-smart and surprisingly funny.” —Harlan Coben, author of The Boy from the Woods The Nightworkers is an electrifying debut crime novel from Brian Selfon about a Brooklyn family of money launderers thrown into chaos when a runner ends up dead and a...

"With its evocative Dublin setting, lyrical prose, tough but sympathetic heroine, and a killer twist in the plot, Sarah Stewart Taylor's The Mountains Wild should top everyone's must-read lists this year!" — New York Times bestselling author Deborah Crombie In a series debut for fans of Tana...

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.  

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.

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. 

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? 

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. 

An unprecedented spate of murders in the 1990s earned Goulburn Jail the ominous name ‘The Killing Fields’. Inmates sentenced or transferred to the 130-year-old towering menace declared they had been given a death sentence. Serial killer Ivan Milat, the ‘Terror Five’ militants who plotted...

From an award-winning journalist, a searing exposé of the effects of the mass incarceration crisis on families -- including the 2.7 million American children who have a parent locked up. In The Shadow System, award-winning journalist Sylvia A. Harvey follows the fears, challenges, and small...