When Ivan Godfrey began his career as a corrections officer in the New York State Corrections System, it was still reeling from the brutal retaliation to the prison riots at Attica. As a young African American, he grew up in the Bronx, then he worked in prisons, such as the notorious Sing-Sing Prison. In fact, Ivan often met inmates he knew on the streets from his New York City neighborhood. His memoir is a wonderful testament to his determination to strive for a better life and take care of his growing family while working in some of the most dangerous prisons in America. It is also a one-of-a-kind window into the life of a young Black prison guard as he struggled to climb the ladder of success despite inherent and overt racial barriers. Now he is an assistant professor, teaching criminal justice and behavioral science at SUNY Ulster CC, forensic mental health at Russell Sage College, and forensic social work and the criminal justice system at the University at Albany School of Social Welfare. Dr. Ivan Godfrey's memoir is an inspiring journey from the streets of the Bronx to the daily psychological and physical violence while working for over twenty years in the NY State Correction System and finally to the halls of academia.

In December 2008, twentysomething Jill Grunenwald graduated with her master's degree in library science, ready to start living her dream of becoming a librarian. But the economy had a different idea. As the Great Recession reared its ugly head, jobs were scarce. After some searching, however, Jill was lucky enough to snag one of the few librarian gigs left in her home state of Ohio. The catch? The job was behind bars as the prison librarian at a men's minimum-security prison. Talk about baptism by fire.

A gritty, suspenseful coming-of-age novel. CJ McCallister graduated from junior high to juvenile hall before he completed eighth grade. He wasn't a bad kid. In many ways, he was a typical teenage boy: curious, awkward, friendly and shy. So where did things go wrong? It may have been the Barocela brothers; twin bullies, relentless in their cruelty. It could have been his delusional dope-smoking dad, or the betrayal of a close friend, or the unrequited love of a girl, or his own voracious appetite for drugs, or the ill-fated bond he forged in detention. Or maybe it was simply that his destiny lay behind the razor wire, as fixed and unavoidable as the rising sun. At eighteen, CJ was handcuffed, shackled and headed for one of the most notorious prison systems in the nation. It was there, in the long shadows of the gun towers, among the sick and dying in the terminal unit of the prison, that he found strength, honor, kindness, and ultimately, himself. Consider the Dragonfly is the heartbreaking, inspiring story of a family fractured by addiction and mental illness, and the journey of a good kid gone bad who manages to hang onto his humanity in spite of losing everything else.

From a federal inmate with two decades of continuous confinement comes a controversial expose of the shocking details of life in American prisons

"Stigma, shame and hardship---this is the lot shared by families whose young men have been swept into prison. Braman reveals the devastating toll mass incarceration takes on the parents, partners, and children left behind." -Katherine S. Newman "Doing Time on the Outside brings to life in a compelling way the human drama, and tragedy, of our incarceration policies. Donald Braman documents the profound economic and social consequences of the American policy of massive imprisonment of young African American males. He shows us the link between the broad-scale policy changes of recent decades and the isolation and stigma that these bring to family members who have a loved one in prison. If we want to understand fully the impact of current criminal justice policies, this book should be required reading." -Mark Mauer, Assistant Director, The Sentencing Project "Through compelling stories and thoughtful analysis, this book describes how our nation's punishment policies have caused incalculable damage to the fabric of family and community life. Anyone concerned about the future of urban America should read this book." -Jeremy Travis, The Urban Institute In the tradition of Elijah Anderson's Code of the Street and Katherine Newman's No Shame in My Game, this startling new ethnography by Donald Braman uncovers the other side of the incarceration saga: the little-told story of the effects of imprisonment on the prisoners' families. Since 1970 the incarceration rate in the United States has more than tripled, and in many cities-urban centers such as Washington, D.C.-it has increased over five-fold. Today, one out of every ten adult black men in the District is in prison and three out of every four can expect to spend some time behind bars. But the numbers don't reveal what it's like for the children, wives, and parents of prisoners, or the subtle and not-so-subtle effects mass incarceration is having on life in the inner city. Author Donald Braman shows that those doing time on the inside are having a ripple effect on the outside-reaching deep into the family and community life of urban America. Braman gives us the personal stories of what happens to the families and communities that prisoners are taken from and return to. Carefully documenting the effects of incarceration on the material and emotional lives of families, this groundbreaking ethnography reveals how criminal justice policies are furthering rather than abating the problem of social disorder. Braman also delivers a number of genuinely new arguments. Among these is the compelling assertion that incarceration is holding offenders unaccountable to victims, communities, and families. The author gives the first detailed account of incarceration's corrosive effect on social capital in the inner city and describes in poignant detail how the stigma of prison pits family and community members against one another. Drawing on a series of powerful family portraits supported by extensive empirical data, Braman shines a light on the darker side of a system that is failing the very families and communities it seeks to protect.

Originally published in hardcover in 2013.

One of the New York Times’s Best Books of the 21st Century Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly‚ Slate‚ Chronicle of Higher Education‚ Literary Hub, Book Riot‚ and Zora A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller—"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education—with a new preface by the author "It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system." —Adam Shatz, London Review of Books Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S." Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.