Justice Reform

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...

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Michael J Sandel's, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? Read by the author himself. Considering the role of justice in our society and our lives, Michael Sandel reveals how an understanding of philosophy can help to make sense of politics...

Blood. Torture. Murder. They've been my only companions for centuries. I haven't needed or wanted anything else. Until I see Matty smile. Then something in me, something that's been dormant for centuries, begins to reawaken. Matty doesn't belong in my world. He's loving, innocent, and full of joy. The darkness of my life would corrupt him in a heartbeat, but when he's dragged into it against his will, nothing can stop me from delivering my personal brand of justice. Matty keeps fighting for things I can't give him, for things I'm no longer capable of. I can't come between him and his family.

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.

In The Price of Justice, Goldfarb uses powerful testimonies, media evidence, and first-hand expertise from working in the Justice Department as a longtime public interest lawyer to reveal how both the criminal and civil justice systems fail to serve lower and middle-class citizens and makes an undeniable case for the profound justice reform that is so desperately needed. Goldfarb asks that we examine closely a legal system that has become largely pay-to-play, benefiting the administrators and those wealthy citizens who can afford to “lawyer up”.

The huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few defenders, yet reforms to reduce the numbers of those incarcerated have been remarkably modest. Meanwhile, an ever-widening carceral state has sprouted in the shadows, extending its reach far beyond the prison gate. It sunders families and communities and reworks conceptions of democracy, rights, and citizenship - posing a formidable political and social challenge. In Caught, Marie Gottschalk examines why the carceral state remains so tenacious in the United States.  

A provocative book that imagines a world sans police—and whether we'd be safer without them. "Thoughtful and insightful." —Alicia Garza, co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter It’s evident that policing is a problem. But what is the best way forward? In Beyond Policing, distinguished scholar and...

Nearly every aspect of our criminal justice system encourages defendants-whether innocent or guilty-to take a plea deal. Punishment Without Trial showcases how plea bargaining has undermined justice at every turn and across socioeconomic and racial divides. It forces the hand of lawyers, judges, and defendants, turning our legal system into a ruthlessly efficient mass incarceration machine that is dogging our jails and pun­ishing citizens.

The first Black man to become sheriff of a major city in the Deep South after Reconstruction, STRIVING FOR JUSTICE is the story of how a poor Black boy grew up in segregated Jacksonville, Florida, survived a violent racist attack by the Ku Klux Klan, and advanced through a blatantly prejudiced police force in the 1960s to become a national leader of police reform in America, who, as President Clinton recognized, broke down barriers, and whose innovative policing reforms created greater respect between citizens and police, lower crime, and safer neighborhoods.

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...