Prison History & Theory
2. 
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness 4.52 avg rating — 115,057 ratings
5. 
Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women
by:
Victoria Law
4.45 avg rating — 207 ratings 6. 
The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth
by:
Kristin Henning
4.56 avg rating — 436 ratings 7. 
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II 4.38 avg rating — 7,035 ratings
8. 
Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People's Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time
by:
James Kilgore
4.14 avg rating — 184 ratings 9. 
Abolition Now!: Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial Complex 4.38 avg rating — 149 ratings
10. 
Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit
by:
Robin Bernstein
4.41 avg rating — 49 ratings 
12. 
13. 
Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, and Empire
by:
Angela Y. Davis
4.47 avg rating — 1,649 ratings 
17. 
Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation
by:
Beth E. Richie
4.43 avg rating — 309 ratings 18. 
Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex
by:
Julia Sudbury
4.37 avg rating — 83 ratings 
20. 
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy 4.45 avg rating — 4,805 ratings
21. 
Crime & Punishment: Offenders and Victims in a Broken Justice System (Redback Quarterly #5)
by:
Russell Marks
4.13 avg rating — 45 ratings 22. 
23. 
Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California 4.40 avg rating — 1,188 ratings
24. 
Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System
by:
Silja J.A. Talvi
4.16 avg rating — 89 ratings 25. 
Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex
by:
Eric A. Stanley
4.44 avg rating — 1,119 ratings 25. 
The Violence of Incarceration (Routledge Advances in Criminology)
by:
Phil Scraton
4.33 avg rating — 6 ratings 
29. 
Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account Of The Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate
by:
Helen Prejean
4.14 avg rating — 8,954 ratings 30. 
A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison 3.83 avg rating — 577 ratings
33. 
The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions
by:
Helen Prejean
4.21 avg rating — 752 ratings 
35. 
Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era
by:
Dan Berger
4.47 avg rating — 66 ratings 36. 
No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court
by:
Edward Humes
4.18 avg rating — 949 ratings 37. 
Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration
by:
Devah Pager
4.09 avg rating — 123 ratings 38. 
The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge Studies in Criminology)
by:
Marie Gottschalk
4.06 avg rating — 53 ratings 
40. 
N*gga Theory: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law
by:
Jody Armour
4.33 avg rating — 63 ratings 42. 
Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality
by:
Regina G. Kunzel
4.10 avg rating — 139 ratings 43. 
Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States
by:
Joey L. Mogul
4.24 avg rating — 824 ratings 
46. 
Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish It 3.76 avg rating — 29 ratings
47. 
Killer Looks: The Forgotten History of Plastic Surgery in Prisons
by:
Zara Stone
4.21 avg rating — 127 ratings 
49. 
Couldn't Keep it to Myself: Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution
by:
Wally Lamb
4.11 avg rating — 7,733 ratings 49. 
Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 3 ratings
52. 
The New Abolitionists: (Neo)Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings
by:
Joy James
4.40 avg rating — 30 ratings 52. 
Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World’s Most Infamous Prison
by:
Sarah Mirk
4.52 avg rating — 1,179 ratings 54. 
Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism 3.83 avg rating — 12 ratings
55. 
Hard Time: Understanding and Reforming the Prison (Contemporary Issues in Crime and Justice Series)
by:
Robert Johnson
3.08 avg rating — 12 ratings 
57. 
60. 
The War on Neighborhoods: Policing, Prison, and Punishment in a Divided City 4.14 avg rating — 71 ratings
64. 
66. 
Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business, and the Incarceration Binge
by:
Donna Selman
3.89 avg rating — 19 ratings 67. 
The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society
by:
David Garland
4.01 avg rating — 236 ratings 
69. 
Indigenous People, Crime and Punishment
by:
Thalia Anthony
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating 71. 
72. 
Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law
by:
Dean Spade
4.42 avg rating — 1,153 ratings 
74. 
The Last Executioner: Memoirs of Thailand's Last Prison Executioner 3.78 avg rating — 281 ratings
74. 
80. 
80. 
80. 
The Narcotic Farm: The Rise and Fall of America's First Prison for Drug Addicts 4.06 avg rating — 111 ratings
80. 
Abolition for the People: The Movement For a Future without Policing and Prisons
by:
Colin Kaepernick
4.08 avg rating — 299 ratings 85. 
Arresting Incarceration: Pathways Out of Indigenous Imprisonment
by:
Don Weatherburn
3.30 avg rating — 10 ratings 
85. 
23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement
by:
Keramet Reiter
4.08 avg rating — 133 ratings 
90. 
Prisoners as Citizens: Human Rights in Australian Prisons
by:
David Brown
it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating 90. 
Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World
by:
Baz Dreisinger
3.85 avg rating — 558 ratings 93. 
Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910 4.15 avg rating — 59 ratings
94. 
The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society
by:
Norval Morris
3.80 avg rating — 92 ratings 
96. 
Ain't Scared of Your Jail: Arrest, Imprisonment, and the Civil Rights Movement
by:
Zoe A. Colley
3.88 avg rating — 8 ratings 97. 
Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment
by:
Angela J. Davis
4.21 avg rating — 945 ratings 98. 
99. 
Committing Journalism: The Prison Writings of Red Hog
by:
Dannie Martin
4.07 avg rating — 69 ratings 100. 
Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics
by:
Marie Gottschalk
4.01 avg rating — 167 ratings