THE HATE U GIVE by ANGIE THOMAS

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death became a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

DEAR MARTIN by NIC STONE

Justyce McAllister is a good kid, an honor student, and always there to help a friend—but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. Despite leaving his rough neighborhood behind, he can’t escape the scorn of his former peers or the ridicule of his new classmates. Justyce looks to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for answers. But do they hold up anymore? He starts a journal to Dr. King to find out.

Then comes the day Justyce goes driving with his best friend, Manny, windows rolled down, music turned up—way up, sparking the fury of a white off-duty cop beside them. Words fly. Shots are fired. Justyce and Manny are caught in the crosshairs. In the media fallout, it’s Justyce who is under attack.

DEAR JUSTYCE by NIC STONE

In the highly anticipated sequel to her New York Times bestseller, Nic Stone delivers an unflinching look into the flawed practices and silenced voices in the American juvenile justice system. Vernell LaQuan Banks and Justyce McAllister grew up a block apart in the Southwest Atlanta neighborhood of Wynwood Heights. Years later, though, Justyce walks the illustrious halls of Yale University . . . and Quan sits behind bars at the Fulton Regional Youth Detention Center.

Through a series of flashbacks, vignettes, and letters to Justyce–the protagonist of Dear Martin–Quan’s story takes form. Troubles at home and misunderstandings at school give rise to police encounters and tough decisions. But then there’s a dead cop and a weapon with Quan’s prints on it. What leads a bright kid down a road to a murder charge? Not even Quan is sure.

PUNCHING THE AIR by IBI ZOBOI and YUSEF SALAAM

Punching the Air is a novel in verse about a 16-year-old boy, Amal, with a budding artistic talent and promising future, who is put away in prison for throwing a punch. But in a way, was he put away before that, by an uncaring and prejudiced system? 

With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth in a system designed to strip him of both.

THE END OF POLICING by ALEX S. VITALE

Recent years have seen an explosion of protest against police brutality and repression. Among activists, journalists and politicians, the conversation about how to respond and improve policing has focused on accountability, diversity, training, and community relations. Unfortunately, these reforms will not produce results, either alone or in combination. The core of the problem must be addressed: the nature of modern policing itself.

This book attempts to spark public discussion by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control. It shows how the expansion of police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice— even public safety. Drawing on groundbreaking research from across the world, and covering virtually every area in the increasingly broad range of police work, Alex Vitale demonstrates how law enforcement has come to exacerbate the very problems it is supposed to solve.

This title has been made available by the author for free online and is available for check out in our physical collection.

JUST MERCY by BRYAN STEVENSON

Bryan Stevenson grew up a member of a poor black community in the racially segregated South. He was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of the US’s criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young black man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, startling racial inequality, and legal brinkmanship — and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

AMERICAN PRISON by SHANE BAUER

An investigative journalist recounts his experiences working undercover as an entry-level guard in a private prison in Louisiana. Along the way, he connects today's for-profit prison system to a brutal system of corrections that became entrenched in the American south and predates the Civil War. Thoroughly researched chapters on the history of prisons and for-profit corrections in the U.S. alternate with chapters that detail the author’s undercover prison experiences.  This juxtaposition highlights how “For much of America’s history, racism, captivity, and profit were intertwined.” A variety of contemporary issues are addressed including prison culture, staffing and substandard correctional services.

Content warning for graphic language and situations.

CHARGED: THE NEW MOVEMENT TO TRANSFORM AMERICAN PROSECUTION AND END MASS INCARCERATION by EMILY BAZELON

In Charged, Emily Bazelon reveals how this kind of unchecked power is the underreported cause of enormous injustice—and the missing piece in the mass incarceration puzzle.

Charged follows the story of two young people caught up in the criminal justice system: Kevin, a twenty-year-old in Brooklyn who picked up his friend’s gun as the cops burst in and was charged with a serious violent felony, and Noura, a teenage girl in Memphis indicted for the murder of her mother. Bazelon tracks both cases—from arrest and charging to trial and sentencing—and, with her trademark blend of deeply reported narrative, legal analysis, and investigative journalism, illustrates just how criminal prosecutions can go wrong and, more important, why they don’t have to.

LOCKING UP OUR OWN by JAMES FORMAN, JR.

Former public defender James Forman, Jr. is a leading critic of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on people of color. In Locking Up Our Own, he seeks to understand the war on crime that began in the 1970s and why it was supported by many African American leaders in the nation’s urban centers.

PRISON BY ANY OTHER NAME by MAYA SCHENWAR AND VICTORIA LAW

As mainstream public opinion has begun to turn against mass incarceration, political figures on both sides of the spectrum are pushing for reform. But some of the key alternatives held up as cost-effective substitutes for jails and prisons are transforming our homes and communities into prisons instead, bringing new populations who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment under physical control by the state. Journalists Maya Schwenwar and Victoria Law reveal the way the kinder, gentler narrative of reform can obscure agendas of social control. They challenge us to question the ways we replicate the status quo when pursuing change.

HALFWAY HOME by REUBEN JONATHAN MILLER

A Chicago Cook County Jail chaplain and sociologist studying mass-incarceration examines the lifelong realities of a criminal record, demonstrating how America's justice system is less about rehabilitation and more about structured disenfranchisement.

NOT A CRIME TO BE POOR by PETER EDELMAN

The author explores how the United States has criminalized poverty, from imposing exorbitant fees and fines for minor offenses and locking up people who are unable to pay, to enforcing punitive laws that mainly impact residents of low-income communities or the homeless.

THE BLACK AND THE BLUE by MATTHEW HORACE

Through gut-wrenching reportage, on-the-ground research, and personal accounts from interviews with police and government officials around the country, veteran law enforcement agent Matthew Horace presents an insider's examination of archaic police tactics. He dissects some of the nation's most highly publicized police shootings and communities to explain how these systems and tactics have hurt the people they serve, revealing the mistakes that have stoked racist policing, sky-high incarceration rates, and an epidemic of violence.