A master class in social change—how a coalition of parents, activists, and prison officials brought a racist and destructive institution to its knees“Nell Bernstein’s book could be for juvenile justice what Rachel Carson’s book was for the environmental movement.” —Andrew Cohen, correspondent, ABC News, about Bernstein’s Burning Down the HouseOver the past twenty years, one state after another has shuttered its you...

The nationally acclaimed "engrossing, disturbing, at times heartbreaking" (Van Jones) book that shines a harsh light on the abusive world of juvenile prisons, by the award-winning journalist"Nell Bernstein's book could be for juvenile justice what Rachel Carson's book was for the environmental movement." —Andrew Cohen, correspondent, ABC NewsWhen teenagers scuffle during a basketball game, they are typically benched. But when Brian got into i...

The nationally acclaimed “engrossing, disturbing, at times heartbreaking” (Van Jones) book that shines a harsh light on the abusive world of juvenile prisons, by the award-winning journalist“Nell Bernstein’s book could be for juvenile justice what Rachel Carson’s book was for the environmental movement.” —Andrew Cohen, correspondent, ABC NewsWhen teenagers scuffle during a basketball game, they are typically benched. But when Brian got into...

One in three American children will be arrested by the time they are twenty-three, and many will spend time locked inside horrific detention centers that defy everything we know about what motivates young people to change. Nell Bernstein eloquently argues that there is no right way to lock up a child. The very act of isolation denies children the thing that is most essential to their growth and rehabilitation: positive relationships with caring adults.Bernstein introduces us to you...

"An unforgettable look at the peculiar horrors and humiliations involved in solitary confinement" from the prisoners who have survived it ( New York Review of Books ).On any given day, the United States holds more than eighty-thousand people in solitary confinement, a punishment that—beyond fifteen days—has been denounced as a form of cruel and degrading treatment by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.Now, in a b...

For nearly forty years the United States has been gripped by policies that have placed more than 2.5 million Americans in jails and prisons designed to hold a fraction of that number of inmates. Our prisons are not only vast and overcrowded, they are degrading—relying on racist gangs, lockdowns, and Supermax-style segregation units to maintain a tenuous order.Mass Incarceration on Trial examines a series of landmark decisions about prison conditions—culminating in Brow...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Unfair succinctly and persuasively recounts cutting-edge research testifying to the faulty and inaccurate procedures that underpin virtually all aspects of our criminal justice system, illustrating many with case studies.”—The Boston GlobeA child is gunned down by a police officer; an investigator ignores critical clues in a case; an innocent man confesses to a crime he did not commit; a jury acquits a killer....

**An award-winning scholar and author of Killing the Black Body exposes the foundational racism of the child welfare system“A brilliant and impassioned call for abolition.” —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow**Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed to punish Black families. Drawing on decades of research, legal scholar and sociologist Dorothy Roberts revea...

An urgent exposéf the mental health crisis in our courts, jails, and prisonsAmerica has made mental illness a crime. Jails in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago each house more people with mental illnesses than any hospital. As many as half of all people in America's jails and prisons have a psychiatric disorder. One in four fatal police shootings involves a person with such disorders.In this revelatory book, journalist Alisa Roth goes deep inside the crim...

An updated edition of the guide to understanding rape as a cultural phenomenon, with survivor resources and strategies for addressing the epidemic.With the advent of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements, and almost daily new reports about rape, both on and off campuses, Robin Warshaw's I Never Called It Rape is even more relevant today than when it was first published in 1988. The sad truth is that statistics on date rape have not changed in more than thirty ...

The public health expert and prison reform activist offers "meticulous analysis" on our criminal justice system and the plague of American incarceration ( The Washington Post).An internationally recognized public health scholar, Ernest Drucker uses the tools of epidemiology to demonstrate that incarceration in the United States has become an epidemic—a plague upon our body politic. He argues that imprisonment, originally conceived as a response to the crim...

More and more women—mothers, grandmothers, wives, daughters, and sisters—are doing hard prison time all across the United States. Many of them are facing the prospect of years, decades, even lifetimes behind bars.Oddly, there's been little public discussion about the dramatic increase of women in the prison system. What exactly is happening here, and why? The answers are in Women Behind Bars, in which investigative journalist Silja Talvi sheds light on why American girls a...