Penology

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.

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....

John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction: a true crime story that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence....

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....

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....

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 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....

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison....

The incredible true story of one of the most extraordinary and inspirational prison breaks in history....

From award-winning investigative journalist Kyle Swenson, Good Kids, Bad City is the true story of the longest wrongful imprisonment in the United States to end in exoneration and a critical social and political history of Cleveland, the city that convicted them....

What happens when you pack almost a dozen jails, bulging at the seams with society’s cast-offs, onto a spit of landfill purposefully hidden from public view? Prize-winning journalists Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau have spent two years interviewing more than 130 people....

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....

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....

Near the beginning of The Autobiography of an Execution, David Dow lays his cards on the table....

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....

In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a mother of 10 children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands had died suddenly and the Crown, convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic, put her on trial....

One of Argentina's 30,000 "disappeared", Alicia Partnoy was abducted from her home by secret police and taken to a concentration camp where she was tortured....

Despite reform efforts that have grown in scope and intensity over the last two decades, the machine of American mass incarceration continues to flourish.

We've heard a lot in recent years about the nearly 2.1 million people incarcerated in American prisons and jails. But what about the approximately four million more who are on probation and parole—monitored by the state at great expense....

In this electric and unforgettable memoir, Keri Blakinger shares her journey from the ice rink, to addiction and a prison sentence, to the newsroom—and tells how she emerged with a fierce determination to expose the broken system she experienced.

Rios followed a group of 40 delinquent Black and Latino boys for three years. These boys found themselves in a vicious cycle, caught in a spiral of punishment and incarceration....

A groundbreaking, haunting, and profoundly moving history of modernity's greatest tragedy: concentration camps....

With the authority of a prominent legal scholar and the practical insights gained through on-the-ground work on criminal-justice reform, Rachel Barkow explains how dangerous it is to base criminal-justice policy on the whims of the electorate....

In the era of mass incarceration, over 600,000 people are released from federal or state prison each year, with many returning to chaotic living environments. In these circumstances, how do former prisoners navigate reentering society? Find out more....