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. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. For generations of Americans, the abolition of slavery was sheerest illusion. Similarly, the entrenched system of racial segregation seemed to last forever, and generations lived in the midst of the practice, with few predicting its passage from custom. The brutal, exploitative (dare one say lucrative?) convict-lease system that succeeded formal slavery reaped millions to southern jurisdictions (and untold miseries for tens of thousands of men, and women). Few predicted its passing from the American penal landscape. Davis expertly argues how social movements transformed these social, political and cultural institutions, and made such practices untenable.
In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for decarceration, and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.

Retirement often marks the beginning of a new chapter in life, but for those who have dedicated their lives to a career in law enforcement, the transition can be particularly challenging. In Surviving Retirement: Finding Purpose and Fulfillment Beyond the Badge, esteemed psychologist and spouse to a retired police officer, Medina Baumgart, PsyD, ABPP, offers a comprehensive guide to navigating the complex emotional landscape that accompanies retirement from the force.

Drawing upon her personal experiences and her expertise in psychology, Dr. Baumgart provides a heartfelt and practical roadmap for law enforcement professionals embarking on this profound life change. From the initial stages of preparing for retirement to the lifelong process of finding purpose and fulfillment, this book offers invaluable insights and strategies to help officers make a successful transition and create a meaningful life beyond their badges.

Within the pages of Surviving Retirement, readers will discover:

• Emotional challenges: Explore the range of emotions commonly experienced during retirement, including loss, identity crisis, and feelings of disconnection. Learn how to recognize and cope with these emotions effectively.
• Identity beyond the badge: Understand the importance of shifting identity from a law enforcement professional to a retiree. Discover strategies to develop a new sense of self and redefine personal values and goals.
• Relationships and support systems: Navigate the complexities of relationships with family, friends, and fellow retirees. Learn effective communication techniques and strategies for maintaining and building strong connections in retirement.
• Mental health and self-care: Prioritize mental health and well-being during retirement. Uncover strategies for managing stress, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and seeking professional help when needed.

With empathy, wisdom, and a deep understanding of the unique challenges retired law enforcement professionals face, Dr. Medina Baumgart provides a guidebook that offers reassurance and empowers readers to create a fulfilling and purpose-driven retirement. Surviving Retirement: Finding Purpose and Fulfillment Beyond the Badge is an essential resource for those seeking a meaningful life after leaving the force, reminding them that their journey doesn't end with retirement; it's a new beginning.

Shortlisted for Columbia Journalism School's J. Anthony Lukas Award

A Publishers Lunch NonFiction Buzz Book Named Most Anticipated by Los Angeles Times

A leading authority on sheriffs investigates the impunity with which they police their communities, alongside the troubling role they play in American life, law enforcement, and, increasingly, national politics.

The figure of the American sheriff has loomed large in popular imagination, though given the outsize jurisdiction sheriffs have over people's lives, the office of sheriffs remains a gravely under-examined institution. Locally elected, largely unaccountable, and difficult to remove, the country's over three thousand sheriffs, mostly white men, wield immense power--making arrests, running county jails, enforcing evictions and immigration laws--with a quarter of all U.S. law enforcement officers reporting to them. In recent years there's been a revival of constitutional sheriffs, who assert that their authority supersedes that of legislatures, courts, and even the president. They've protested federal mask and vaccine mandates and gun regulations, railed against police reforms, and, ultimately, declared themselves election police, with many endorsing the Big Lie of a stolen presidential election. They are embraced by far-right militia groups, white nationalists, the Claremont Institute, and former president Donald Trump, who sees them as allies in mass deportation and border policing.

How did a group of law enforcement officers decide that they were above the law? What are the stakes for local and national politics, and for America as a multi-racial democracy?

Blending investigative reporting, historical research, and political analysis, author Jessica Pishko takes us to the roots of why sheriffs have become a flashpoint in the current politics of toxic masculinity, guns, white supremacy, and rural resentment, and uncovers how sheriffs have effectively evaded accountability since the nation's founding.

A must-read for fans of Michelle Alexander, Gilbert King, Elizabeth Hinton, and Kathleen Belew.

A devastating and lyrical work of nonfiction, Young Men and Fire describes the events of August 5, 1949, when a crew of fifteen of the US Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of the men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy in Young Men and Fire, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Alongside Maclean's now-canonical A River Runs through It and Other Stories, Young Men and Fire is recognized today as a classic of the American West. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Maclean's later triumph--the last book he would write--includes a powerful new foreword by Timothy Egan, author of The Big Burn and The Worst Hard Time. As moving and profound as when it was first published, Young Men and Fire honors the literary legacy of a man who gave voice to an essential corner of the American soul.

One of the New York Times' 6 New Paperbacks to Read

Now in paperback and with new material, a 2021 Kirkus Best Book of the year in both Nonfiction and Current Events, the book Naomi Klein called: a triumph of political imagination and a tremendous gift to all movements struggling towards liberation.

For more than a century, activists in the United States have tried to reform the police. Millions of people continue to protest police violence because these solutions do not match the problem: the police cannot be reformed.

In her critically acclaimed first book Becoming Abolitionists, Purnell draws from her experiences as a lawyer, writer, and organizer initially skeptical about police abolition. She saw too much sexual violence and buried too many friends to consider getting rid of police in her hometown of St. Louis, let alone the nation. But the police were a placebo. Calling them felt like something, and something feels like everything when the other option seems like nothing.

Purnell details how multi-racial social movements rooted in rebellion, risk-taking, and revolutionary love pushed her and a generation of activists toward abolition. The book travels across geography and time, and offers lessons that activists have learned from Ferguson to South Africa, from Reconstruction to contemporary protests against police shootings.

Here, Purnell invites readers to envision new systems that work to address the root causes of violence. Becoming Abolitionists shows that abolition is not solely about getting rid of police, but a commitment to create and support different answers to the problem of harm in society, and, most excitingly, an opportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the first place.

A former FBI agent's urgent call for law enforcement to prioritize far-right violence and end tolerance for police racism

In Policing White Supremacy, former FBI agent Mike German, who worked undercover in white supremacist and militia groups, issues a wake-up call about law enforcement's dangerously lax approach to far-right violence.

Despite over a hundred deadly acts by far-right militants since the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and the far right's attempts to obstruct transfer of power to a duly elected president on January 6, the FBI continues to deprioritize investigations into white supremacist violence, instead targeting marginalized groups such as environmentalists and Black Lives Matter. In 2005, for example, the FBI labeled eco-terrorists as the top domestic threat, despite not a single fatal attack in the United States.

Noting that the FBI does not even compile accurate national data on white supremacist violence, German also exposes the continuing tolerance of overt racism in law enforcement, and police membership in white supremacist organizations. The threat these officers pose became clear when at least twenty-eight current and former law enforcement officials were alleged to have participated in the 2021 Capitol breach.

With chapters on The Rise of the Proud Boys, A New Approach to Policing Hate Crimes, and Policing the Police, Policing White Supremacy shows how the lack of transparency and accountability in federal, state, and local law enforcement has eroded public trust and undermined democracy. Law Enforcement's Role in Resisting White Supremacy points the way forward to a future where far-right violence is recognized and addressed as the true threat it presents to our country.

A passionate call to abandon ineffective drug-war policies, reframe addiction as a public health issue, and end the Fentanyl crisis.

The American overdose crisis has reached record-breaking heights; preventable overdoses are now responsible for more annual deaths than traffic accidents, suicide, or gun violence. Fentanyl--a potent, inexpensive, and easy-to-manufacture synthetic opioid--has thoroughly contaminated the drug supply, and while it frequently makes front page news across the country, it remains poorly understood by policymakers and the public. Why, despite all of our efforts to raise awareness and billions of dollars of investments, does this emergency keep getting worse?

In Fentanyl Nation, recovery advocate Ryan Hampton separates the facts from the fiction surrounding Fentanyl, and shows how overdose deaths are ultimately policy failures. Instead of investing in education, harm reduction, effective treatment, and recovery, we have doubled down on more police, more incarceration, and harsher penalties for those caught in the grip of addiction. Yet history has shown time and time again that it is impossible to arrest our way out of a public health crisis; the government used the same strategy to fight the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 80s and 90s, and it only resulted in racially disparate policing and the destruction of marginalized communities.

This urgent and informative manifesto reveals how prejudice, discrimination, and stigma have been codified into our drug laws, and calls for a compassionate and evidence-based approach that would address the core causes of addiction and save countless lives. We can end this crisis, but only if we get out of our own way.

The best-selling bible of the movement to defund the police in an updated edition

Urgent, provocative, and timely, The End of Policing will make you question most of what you have been taught to believe about crime and how to solve it.
--James Forman Jr., author of Locking Up Our Own

The massive uprising that followed the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020-- by some estimates the largest protests in US history--thrust the argument to defund the police to the forefront of international politics. That case had been put persuasively a few years earlier in The End of Policing by Alex Vitale, now a leading figure in the urgent public discussion over policing and racial justice.
The central problem, Vitale demonstrates, is the dramatic expansion of the police role over the last forty years. Drawing on firsthand research from across the globe, he shows how the implementation of alternatives to policing--such as drug legalization, regulation, and harm reduction instead of the policing of drugs--has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice.

This updated edition includes a new introduction that takes stock of the renewed movement to challenge police impunity and shows how we move forward, evaluating protest, policy, and the political situation.

Since 1997, the US Department of Defense has transferred more than $7.2bn in military equipment to law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, the DOD is legally required to make various equipment items available to local police and school police departments, from flashlights and sandbags to grenade launchers and armored vehicles. This militarization has, unsurprisingly, been shown to impact Black communities unjustly and is associated with increased killings by police. No wonder there have been calls to 'defund the police' echoing across the streets of America.

In Beyond Cop Cities, Joy James and fellow contributors take these calls one step further, highlighting the Stop Cop City movement - one of the most vibrant in the US today. Linking the anti-policing and racial justice movement with radical ecological 'forest defender' activism, the Stop Cop City campaign is a grassroots movement that aims to push back on police militarization by blocking the construction of Atlanta's Police Public Safety Training Center.

Sharp and concise, including the voices of key figures in the movement along with the mother of murdered activist 'Tortuguita' (shot and killed by Georgia police while protesting), this collection of vital and politically sophisticated writings captures a moment in time, demanding a safer, less brutal, future.

Stoicism offers tools for cultivating mental resilience in the face of adversity. By teaching us what is within our control and encouraging us to live a life in alignment with the cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage, Stoicism is a tailor-made operating system for first responders navigating unpredictable circumstances in a fast, uncertain, and rapidly evolving environment.

Discover the wisdom of the great Stoics distilled into bite-sized daily entries and placed into a modern context. Through these teachings and daily journal prompts, you will learn to develop the emotional fortitude and self-discipline to manage your life and career with greater integrity and equilibrium while becoming a more formidable, reliable, and indispensable asset for the people you serve - at work and at home!

Your gear and body armor give you the tools you need to defend yourself and others in the line of duty. It's time to guard your mind and soul with Stoic Armor!

Kristofor Healey is a veteran Special Agent with more than 15 years of experience in federal law enforcement. Healey is the author of Indispensable: A Tactical Plan for the Modern Man and the host of The Stoic Responder podcast, where he shares wisdom from Stoic philosophers that first responders can use to take control of their lives and careers.

With constant evolution being experienced in the policing profession, the odds of successfully navigating a career from its onset to completion have become increasingly slim. Whether attributed to the complexities of modern directives, the frustrations of contradicting legislation, or the overwhelming pressures felt due to the concerted efforts of reformists, the nobility of the calling has certainly been called to center-stage. Who, in their sane mind, would want this job given the current climate?

Fear not, for the noble ones still do exist as the overwhelming majority, however, their existence is being threatened by the advent of enhanced scrutiny, while lacking the adequate tools to avoid the inevitable spoils along the way. Leadership in the very essence of the term has never been more of a necessity, yet we commonly find it to be more of an anomaly. Is this because our supervisory ranks are plagued by demonic patrons or could it be simply an expected outcome as numbness of the soul has begun to steer the ship.

This crucible is meant to provide a series of lessons as the cliché rings, If I only knew then, what I've come to know now. For officers; A candid analysis of policing's trials and tribulations, while offering a guide to navigate the treacherous path which has been paved. For officers' loved ones; A means to acceptance, forgiveness, and acknowledgement. For the oppositionist; A means to an understanding, not necessarily agreement.

For all; A means to heal not hurt.

An inside look at how police officers are trained to perpetuate state violence

Michael Brown. Philando Castile. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. As the names of those killed by the police became cemented into public memory, the American public took to the streets in unprecedented numbers to mourn, organize, and demand changes to the current system of policing. In response, police departments across the country committed themselves to change, pledging to hire more women and people of color, incorporate diversity training, and instruct officers to verbally de-escalate interactions with the public.

These reform efforts tend to rely on a bad apple argument, focusing the nature and scope of the problem on the behavior of specific individuals and rarely considering the broader organizational process that determines who is allowed to patrol the public and how they learn to do their jobs. In Before the Badge, Samantha J. Simon provides a firsthand look into how police officers are selected and trained, describing every stage of the process, including recruitment, classroom instruction, and tactical training.

Simon spent a year at police academies participating in the training alongside cadets, giving her a visceral, hands-on understanding of how police training operates. Using rich and detailed examples, she reveals that the process does more than test a cadet's physical or intellectual abilities. Instead, it socializes cadets into a system of state violence. As training progresses, cadets are expected to see themselves as warriors and to view Black and Latino/a members of the public as their enemies. Cadets who cannot or will not uphold this approach end up washing out. In Before the Badge, Simon explains how this training creates a context in which patterns of police violence persist and implores readers to re-envision the future of policing in the United States.

The January 6th attack is an unprecedented crime in American history. Sprawling and openly political, it can't be handled by the traditional rules and norms of law enforcement--threatening the very idea of justice and its role in society.

The attack on the Capitol building following the 2020 election was an extraordinarily large and brazen crime. Conspiracies were formed on social media in full public view, the law-breakers paraded on national television with undisguised faces, and with outgoing President Donald Trump openly cheering them on. The basic concept of law enforcement--investigators find criminals and serve justice--quickly breaks down in the face of such an event. The system has been strained by the sheer volume of criminals and the widespread perception that what they did wasn't wrong.

A mass of online tipsters--sedition hunters--have mobilized, simultaneously providing the FBI with valuable intelligence and creating an ethical dilemma. Who gets to serve justice? How can law enforcement still function as a pillar of civil society? As the foundations of our government are questioned, the FBI and Department of Justice are the first responders to a crisis of democracy and law that threatens to spread, and fast.

In this work of extraordinary reportage, Ryan Reilly gets to know would-be revolutionaries, obsessive online sleuths, and FBI agents, and shines a light on a justice system that's straining to maintain order in our polarized country. From the moment the police barriers were breached on January 6th, 2021, Americans knew something had profoundly changed. Sedition Hunters is the fascinating, high-stakes story of what happens next.

NYT EDITOR'S CHOICE - WASHINGTON POST BEST NONFICTION OF 2023 - Shortlisted for the 2024 Chicago Review of Books Award - FROM THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF HIGH-RISERS comes a groundbreaking and honest investigation into the crisis of the American criminal justice system-through the lens of parole. Perfect for fans of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy

Correction ranks among the very best books on life inside and outside of prison I have ever read. ―Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted

Correction provides a revelatory lens for examining mass incarceration. -The Washington Post

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023: Chicago Review of Books, The Chicago Tribune, The Next Big Idea Club

The United States, alone, locks up a quarter of the world's incarcerated people. And yet apart from clichés--paying a debt to society; you do the crime, you do the time--there is little sense collectively in America what constitutes retribution or atonement. We don't actually know why we punish.

Ben Austen's powerful exploration offers a behind-the-scenes look at the process of parole. Told through the portraits of two men imprisoned for murder, and the parole board that holds their freedom in the balance, Austen's unflinching storytelling forces us to reckon with some of the most profound questions underlying the country's values around crime and punishment. What must someone who commits a terrible act do to get a second chance? What does incarceration seek to accomplish?

An illuminating work of narrative nonfiction, Correction challenges us to consider for ourselves why and who we punish-and how we might find a way out of an era of mass imprisonment.

An instant national best seller

A persuasive primer on police abolition from two veteran organizers

One of the world's most prominent advocates, organizers and political educators of the [abolitionist] framework. --NBCNews.com on Mariame Kaba

In this powerful call to action, New York Times bestselling author Mariame Kaba and attorney and organizer Andrea J. Ritchie detail why policing doesn't stop violence, instead perpetuating widespread harm; outline the many failures of contemporary police reforms; and explore demands to defund police, divest from policing, and invest in community resources to create greater safety through a Black feminist lens.

Centering survivors of state, interpersonal, and community-based violence, and highlighting uprisings, campaigns, and community-based projects, No More Police makes a compelling case for a world where the tools required to prevent, interrupt, and transform violence in all its forms are abundant. Part handbook, part road map, No More Police calls on us to turn away from systems that perpetrate violence in the name of ending it toward a world where violence is the exception, and safe, well-resourced and thriving communities are the rule.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The first definitive account of the rise and fall of the Secret Service, from the Kennedy assassination to the alarming lapses of the Obama and Trump years--from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carol Leonnig

This book is a wake-up call, and a valuable study of a critically important agency.--The New York Times

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Carol Leonnig reported on the Secret Service for nearly a decade, bringing to light the secrets, scandals, and shortcomings that plague the agency today--from a toxic workplace culture to dangerously outdated equipment to the deep resentment within the ranks at key agency leaders, who put protecting the agency's once-hallowed image before fixing its flaws.

The Secret Service was born in 1865, in the wake of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but its story begins in earnest in 1963, with the death of John F. Kennedy. Shocked into reform by its failure to protect the president on that fateful day in Dallas, this once-sleepy agency was radically transformed into an elite, highly trained unit that would redeem itself several times, most famously in 1981 by thwarting an assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan. But by Barack Obama's presidency, the once-proud Secret Service was running on fumes and beset by mismanagement and mistakes in judgement: break-ins at the White House, an armed gunman firing into the windows of the residence while confused agents stood by, and a massive prostitution scandal among agents in Cartagena, to name just a few. With Donald Trump's arrival, a series of promised reforms were cast aside, as a president disdainful of public service instead abused the Secret Service to rack up political and personal gains.

To explore these problems in the ranks, Leonnig interviewed dozens of current and former agents, government officials, and whistleblowers who put their jobs on the line to speak out about a hobbled agency that is in desperate need of reform.

Tradecraft All Around Us!

Throughout history, black market goods, weapons, narcotics, and other assets have been transported across borders, within rural and metropolitan areas of every nation. A lucrative business, operated by thousands of sophisticated criminal organizations, is responsible for death, destruction, and ripping apart families and nations. Its reliance is on supply and demand, and it operates through a system of carefully designed and deployed clandestine measures throughout the world. Its focal point is profit!

This book gives you insight into the dynamic nature of these clandestine operations and how the author identifies, apprehends, and helps lock away Smugglers, even using them to train law enforcement agents throughout the world. The next time you see a headline that a large shipment of narcotics was seized, or a terrorist cell was identified and apprehended on the highways, you'll have the inside track into the work conducted by those who protect the innocent public. It is a guide for civilians, military, intelligence, and law enforcement worldwide in understanding these unique operations.

Dive deep into the art and science of digital forensics and incident response investigations with Brett Shavers' transformative guide, DFIR Investigative Mindset.

Success in digital crime and cybersecurity breaches hinges on technical prowess and the cultivation of a powerful investigative mindset. Drawing on his extensive experience as a DFIR veteran, Brett Shavers presents a comprehensive roadmap for developing this mindset, which is necessary to excel in both criminal and civil investigations.

DFIR Investigative Mindset provides a holistic approach to investigative thinking, offering actionable strategies and insightful techniques to enhance your problem-solving abilities and investigative acumen. From understanding the intricacies of legal procedures to mastering the nuances of evidence analysis, this book equips you with the tools and mindset shifts needed to tackle any case with confidence and precision.

Inside, you'll explore:

• The fundamental principles of investigative psychology and cognitive biases and how they influence decision-making in digital forensics and incident response.
• Techniques for developing a structured approach to investigation planning, execution, and reporting, ensuring thoroughness and accuracy in every step of the process.
• Strategies for effectively managing the challenges of digital evidence collection, preservation, and analysis, while adhering to best practices and legal standards.
• Real-world case studies and practical examples that illustrate the application of investigative mindset principles in diverse scenarios, from cybercrime investigations to corporate data breaches.
• Guidance on cultivating resilience and adaptability in the face of evolving threats and emerging technologies, enabling you to stay ahead of the curve in cybersecurity's dynamic landscape.

Whether you're a seasoned investigator seeking to sharpen your skills or a newcomer looking to make your mark in the field, DFIR Investigative Mindset offers invaluable insights and actionable guidance to elevate your performance and achieve excellence in digital forensics and incident response.

Don't just follow the evidence-transform your mindset and revolutionize your investigative approach. Embark on your journey to mastery with DFIR Investigative Mindset today, and unlock the keys to success in the complex world of cyber investigations.