The police in America belong to the people -- not the other way around. Yet millions of Americans experience their cops as racist, brutal, and trigger-happy: an overly aggressive, militarized enemy of the people. For their part, today's officers feel they are under siege -- misunderstood, unfairly criticized, and scapegoated for society's ills. Is there a fix? Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper believes there is.Policing is in crisis. The last decade has witn...

American policing is in crisis. The last decade witnessed a vast increase in police aggression, misconduct, and militarization, along with a corresponding reduction in transparency and accountability. Nowhere is this more noticeable and painful than in African American and other ethnic minority communities. Racism—from raw, individualized versions to insidious systemic examples—appears to be on the rise in our police departments. Overall, our police officers have grown more and more aliena...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENTHailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a ...

A deeply reported book that brings alive the quest for justice in the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray, offering both unparalleled insight into the reality of police violence in America and an intimate, moving portrait of those working to end it.Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charlest...

Many thought the election of our first African American president put an end to the conversation about race in this country, and that America had moved into a post–racial era of equality and opportunity. Then, on the night of February 26, 2012, a black seventeen–year–old boy walking to a friend's home carrying only his cell phone, candy, and a fruit drink, was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch coordinator.And in July 2013, the trial of Zimmerman for murder captivated the publ...

Paddy Armstrong was one of four people falsely convicted of The Guildford Bombing in 1975. He spent fifteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Today, as a husband and father, life is wonderfully ordinary, but the memory of his ordeal lives on. Here, for the first time and with unflinching candour, he lays bare the experiences of those years and their aftermath. Life after Life is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of forgiveness. It reminds us of th...

From the best-selling author of The Working Poor, an impassioned, incisive look at the violations of civil liberties in the United States that have accelerated over the past decade—and their direct impact on our lives.How have our rights to privacy and justice been undermined? What exactly have we lost? Pulitzer Prize–winner David K. Shipler searches for the answers to these questions by examining the historical expansion and contraction of our fundamental rights and, most...

Essays and reports examining the reality of police violence against Black and brown communities in America.What is the reality of policing in the United States? Do the police keep anyone safe and secure other than the very wealthy? How do recent police killings of young Black people in the United States fit into the historical and global context of anti-blackness?This collection of reports and essays (the first collaboration between Truthout and Ha...

Let's begin with the basics: violence is an inherent part of policing. The police represent the most direct means by which the state imposes its will on the citizenry. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent.Using media reports alone, the Cato Institute's last annual study listed nearly seven thousand victims of po...

A gripping account of one man's long road to freedom that will forever change how we understand our criminal justice system.During the last three decades, more than two thousand American citizens have been wrongfully convicted. Ghost of the Innocent Man brings us one of the most dramatic of those cases and provides the clearest picture yet of the national scourge of wrongful conviction and of the opportunity for meaningful reform.When the final gavel...

In sheer numbers, no form of government control comes close to the police stop. Each year, twelve percent of drivers in the United States are stopped by the police, and the figure is almost double among racial minorities. Police stops are among the most recognizable and frequently criticized incidences of racial profiling, but, while numerous studies have shown that minorities are pulled over at higher rates, none have examined how police stops have come to be both encouraged and instituti...

FROM THE VERY FOUNDING OF OUR NATION, diversity has been one of our greatest strengths but also the greatest source of conflict. In less than a generation, America will become "minority-majority," and the world economy, already interconnected, will be even more globalized. The stakes for how we handle this evolution couldn't be higher. Will diversity be a source of growth, prosperity, and progress-or perpetual division and strife?America has the potential to realize...