Criminal Justice Word List

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

WATCH

1. 13th — Ava DuVernay, 2016 · Documentary · Mass incarceration as the continuation of slavery through the 13th Amendment’s loophole.

2. Just Mercy — Destin Daniel Cretton, 2019 · Film · Bryan Stevenson fighting for a man wrongly sentenced to death.

3. When They See Us — Ava DuVernay, 2019 · Series · The Central Park Five; wrongful conviction and the system that put them there.

4. Making a Murderer — Laura Ricciardi & Moira Demos, 2015 · Series · Two men in Wisconsin; the criminal justice system examined from inside a specific case.

5. The Kalief Browder Story — Various, 2017 · Series · Three years on Rikers Island without trial; pretrial detention and its human cost.

6. I Am Innocence — Various · Wrongful conviction stories and what the criminal justice system gets wrong.

7. Crime + Punishment — Stephen Maing, 2018 · Documentary · NYPD officers blowing the whistle on arrest quotas; policing from the inside.

8. The House I Live In — Eugene Jarecki, 2012 · Documentary · The war on drugs and the criminal justice system it created.

9. True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality — Various, 2019 · Documentary · Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative and the criminal justice system it challenges.

10. Locked Up Abroad — National Geographic, 2007– · Series · Americans in foreign criminal justice systems; comparative justice made vivid.

LISTEN

1. Justice in America — Josie Duffy Rice & Clint Smith · Criminal justice reform with depth and rigor; essential.

2. Ear Hustle — Earlonne Woods & Nigel Poor · Inside San Quentin; criminal justice from those living inside it.

3. Wrongful Conviction — Jason Flom · Exonerees telling their own stories; the criminal justice system’s catastrophic failures.

4. Criminal — Phoebe Judge · Crime, criminals, and the criminal justice system examined with empathy.

5. The Daily: Criminal justice — NYT · Breaking news and in-depth reporting on criminal justice issues.

6. Pod Save the People — DeRay Mckesson · Criminal justice reform as political strategy.

7. Reveal — Center for Investigative Reporting · Investigative reporting on criminal justice failures.

8. Death Row Stories — CNN podcast · Capital punishment and the criminal justice system examined case by case.

9. Somebody — Various · Stories of people inside the criminal justice system told with humanity.

10. Scene on Radio: Criminal justice — CDS · Structural racism and the criminal justice system explored in depth.

READ

1. The New Jim Crow — Michelle Alexander · Mass incarceration as a racial caste system; the book that reframed criminal justice.

2. Just Mercy — Bryan Stevenson · A lawyer fighting the criminal justice system on behalf of the condemned.

3. Becoming Ms. Burton — Susan Burton · A woman cycling through the criminal justice system and her fight to break the cycle.

4. Are Prisons Obsolete? — Angela Davis · Abolition as the answer to a criminal justice system that cannot be reformed.

5. Locking Up Our Own — James Forman Jr. · Black politicians and their role in building the criminal justice system that harms Black people.

6. The Autobiography of an Execution — David R. Dow · A death penalty lawyer’s account of the criminal justice system from its edge.

7. Pushout — Monique W. Morris · Black girls in the school-to-prison pipeline; criminal justice begins in childhood.

8. Orange Is the New Black — Piper Kerman · A white woman in federal prison; the criminal justice system through a fish-out-of-water lens.

9. A Colony in a Nation — Chris Hayes · Two systems of justice in one country; the criminal justice system as colonial project.

10. Solitary — Albert Woodfox — Forty-four years in solitary confinement; the criminal justice system’s capacity for torture.