What We Know, Daryl Atkinson
What We Know, Daryl Atkinson
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

What We Know
Solutions from Our Experiences in the Justice System

Author: Daryl Atkinson, Vivian Nixon

Narrator: Timothy Andrés Pabon, Janina Edwards, David Sadzin

Unabridged: 7 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/09/2021


Synopsis

When The New Press, the Center for American Progress, and the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Peoples and Family Movement issued a call for innovative reform ideas, over three hundred currently and formerly incarcerated individuals responded. What We Know collects two dozen of their best suggestions, each of which proposes a policy solution derived from their own lived experience.

Ideas run the gamut: A man serving time in Indiana argues for a Prison Labor Standards Act, calling for us to reject prison slavery. A Nebraska man who served a federal prison term for white-collar crimes suggests offering courses in entrepreneurship as a way to break down barriers to employment for people returning from incarceration. A woman serving a life sentence in Georgia spells out a system of earned privileges that could increase safety and decrease stress inside prison. And a man serving a twenty-five-year term for a crime he committed at age fifteen advocates powerfully for eliminating existing financial incentives to charge youths as adults.

With contributors including nationally known formerly incarcerated leaders in justice reform, twenty-three justice-involved individuals add a perspective that is too often left out of national reform conversations.

About Daryl Atkinson

Attorney Daryl V. Atkinson was the inaugural Second Chance Fellow for the US Department of Justice, and is now codirector of Forward Justice, a law, policy, and strategy center in Durham, North Carolina. He is coeditor (with Vivian Nixon) of What We Know.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lauren

"Civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson said, 'Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.' [...] Collectively, we have reached a critical point where the justice reform movement can no longer ignore or......more

Goodreads review by Jade

I think the most important thing a person can do when they read this book is to sit down, take a step back, and listen. Depending on your degree of knowledge of the US judicial and prison systems you may or may not agree with some solutions, and you may hear yourself saying “OMG” out loud at times.......more

Goodreads review by Holly

A compelling collection of essays from justice-involved individuals offering their proposals for changes within the criminal justice system. ⁣I was particularly touched by a few entries: Teresa Y. Hodge’s convincing call for digital inclusion efforts, C.T. Mexica’s description of his experience as a......more

Goodreads review by Sierra

"I met a man in a Norwegian prison who said whenever he gets depressed he watches a documentary about U.S. prisons and thanks God he is in Norway." This is but one of many passages I highlighted while reading this book. The editors have compiled a stellar group of essays focused on novel ideas for......more

Goodreads review by Liz

The World Trade Organisation made claims that it spoke on behalf of humanity, was in fact the symbol of capitalist globalisation: You claim to speak on behalf of the of the whole, but can you actually do so? Who is it was being included. Who is it was being excluded when you came to speak on behalf......more