by Jessica Henry, April 2026 (Second Chance Month)
I have spent the last thirty-plus years thinking about what the American criminal legal system does to people, first as a public defender, then as a professor, and now as an author of a new book on second chances for the University of California Press (coming, 2027). My first book, Smoke but No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes that Never Happened (2020), documents the injustices the system inflicts upon the wrongly convicted.
After all that time and experience, I’m still trying to understand why the system is so punitive, and why second chances remain so rare, especially when people are serving sentences far more severe than necessary.
If you’d like to join me in this ongoing exploration, I’d start with this reading list. It was difficult to decide which book to include, and I did my best to provide a mix of titles, some that are well-known and others that may not have crossed your radar, with a heavy emphasis on books written by people with lived experiences in the prison system.
Many of these books are devastating to read. But each book offers a deeply personal account of what the system does, how people survive inside prisons, and the strength required to build a life after release. The hope and vision within these books, even amid the darkness, make them essential reading.
Memoirs by Formerly Incarcerated People
Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison Shaka Senghor | Convergent Books, 2016
Shaka Senghor was a troubled youth who spent nineteen-years in prison, seven in solitary confinement. This book is a powerful account of his journey to redemption. While incarcerated, Senghor found literature, meditation, and self-examination to heal and make amends for his wrongdoing, all while charting a path forward. Upon his release, Senghor became a national leader in criminal justice reform. Writing My Wrongs, a New York Times bestseller and an Oprah book selection, is a must read for people who believe in the power of redemption and who seek to find the meaning of healing and true accountability.
A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison Reginald Dwayne Betts | Penguin, 2009
Reginald Dwayne Betts was incarcerated at sixteen for an armed car jacking. He went on to become a poet, lawyer (Yale, ‘16), and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. He founded Freedom Reads, a project that provides books to incarcerated people, and now runs Square One, placing formerly incarcerated poets in law school clinics to work on expungement cases. Read A Question of Freedom alongside his hard-hitting poetry collection Felon.
Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women Susan Burton | The New Press, 2017
Susan Burton cycled in and out of prison for fifteen years during our nation’s “War on Drugs,” caught in a system far too willing to incarcerate but entirely unwilling to provide assistance for her underlying addiction. After pursuing her own recovery, Burton founded A New Way of Life, which provides housing and support to formerly incarcerated women in Los Angeles. This book captures the often-overlooked perspective of Black women, and celebrates Burton’s accomplishments in creating something powerful for those around her.
Corrections in Ink Keri Blakinger | St. Martin’s Press, 2022
Keri Blakinger was a student at Cornell University and a competitive figure skater when heroin landed her in prison for nearly two years. After her release, she finished her degree, became an investigative reporter at The Marshall Project and the Los Angeles Times, and now covers the very prison system that she experienced from the inside. The book is explicitly framed around second chances and who our society grants them to. Piper Kerman (“Orange is the New Black”) called it “groundbreaking”, while the New York Times sang Blakinger’s praises. An excellent read.
Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison Piper Kerman Random House, 2011
Piper Kerman’s breakout book Orange is the New Black (and inspiration for the Netflix series of the same name) chronicles her year in a women’s federal prison for a drug crime. Harrowing and funny at the same time, Kerman’s book brought women in prison to the national spotlight. In the process, she raises important questions about who is incarcerated, why they are there, and what really happens behind the bars.
My Time Will Come: A Memoir of Crime, Punishment and Hope Ian Manuel | Pantheon, 2021
Ian Manuel was only fourteen-years-old when he was sentenced to life without parole for a non-fatal crime. Kept in solitary confinement for 18 years and incarcerated for even longer, Manuel and his victim, Debbie Baigre, forged a close relationship. Baigre, alongside Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, were passionate advocates for his release. This best-selling memoir chronicles Manuel’s redemption, proving once again that we are all more than the worst thing we have ever done. In the book’s forward, Stevenson describes Manuel as “magic.” Read this book to see why.
I Cried to Dream Again: Trafficking, Murder, and Deliverance Sara Kruzan | Pantheon, 2022
Sara Kruzan was trafficked at the age of eleven, groomed by her abuser for years, convicted of murdering him at sixteen, and sentenced to life without parole as a juvenile. She spent nearly twenty years in prison before advocates helped gain her release. Now Kruzan is an advocate for trafficking survivors and the namesake of Sara’s Law in California. This book highlights the intersection of juvenile justice, domestic violence, and extreme sentencing, and makes a compelling case for second chances.
Breaking Good Nikki Mammano | Regalo Press, 2026
Nikki Mammano grew up in New Jersey, ended up in Hawaii, became a player in Waikiki’s drug trade, and eventually had to reckon with the trauma that drove all of it. The book is a page-turner, frank, wry, and darkly funny. I had the pleasure of hosting Nikki on my podcast Just Justice. You won’t want to miss this.
Memoirs About the Impact of Incarceration
Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration Reuben Miller | Little, Brown and Company, 2021
Reuben Miller is a sociologist, former jail chaplain, and MacArthur Fellow who spent fifteen years alongside people navigating life after incarceration. His central argument is that release from prison does not mean freedom. It means entry into what Miller calls the supervised society, a web of restrictions and legal barriers that functions as its own form of incarceration. For a hard look at reentry, read this one.
Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine: Reform, White Supremacy, and an Abolitionist Future Emile Suotonye DeWeaver | The New Press, 2025
Emile Suotonye DeWeaver was sentenced to 67 years to life at the age of eighteen. He spent twenty-one years in prison writing, co-founding Prison Renaissance, and covertly organizing to pass legislation affecting juvenile sentencing in California. Governor Brown commuted DeWeaver’s sentence in 2017 in recognition of his efforts. This debut book combines personal narrative with structural critique. Ghost in the Criminal Justiec Machine makes a powerful case for abolition of the carceral state. He was also a guest on Just Justice.
Right Here. Right Now: Life Stories from America’s Death Row Lynden Harris (editor) | Duke University Press 202
This essay collection of first-person narratives written by men on death row is stunning. The essays share stories from childhood through incarceration, documenting the trauma, poverty, pain and system inequalities that preceded their time on the row. These stories are a punch straight to the gut. They contextual and humanize people condemned to die and provoke important questions about who we punish and why.
Couldn’t Keep It to Myself: Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution (Testimonies from our Imprisoned Sisters) Wally Lamb | Harper Perennial, 2011
Another collection of short autobiographical essays, these stories were written by women incarcerated at the York Correctional Institution in Connecticut in connection with a writing workshop by acclaimed author Wally Lamb. The first of three essay collections published through this process, Couldn’t Keep it to Myself is probably my favorite. Read this for a glimpse into the inner workings of women whose lives in prison extend well beyond the prison walls.
Formerly Incarcerated but Wrongly Convicted*
I previously wrote a list of books written by people who were wrongly convicted. You can access that complete list here. Below are a few featured selections:
The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row Anthony Ray Hinton | St. Martin’s Press, 2018
Anthony Ray Hinton spent nearly thirty years on Alabama’s death row for crimes he did not commit, convicted on the basis of flawed forensic evidence. He was exonerated in 2015. This book is extraordinary not just only because it shares the injustice of what happened to him, but also because it highlights what Hinton chose to do with his time on death row, forming community with the men around him and maintaining his humanity in conditions deliberately designed to dehumanize. As a researcher of wrongful convictions and second chances, I love this book.
Redeeming Justice: From Defendant to Defender, My Fight for Equity on Both Sides of a Broken System Jarrett Adams | Convergent Books, 2021
Jarrett Adams was wrongfully convicted at seventeen by an all-white jury and sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison. After nearly a decade, the Wisconsin Innocence Project helped win his release. He became the first exoneree ever hired as a staff attorney by the Innocence Project. His first case was argued before the same court where he had once been convicted. I loved this moving, full-circle story.
Solitary Albert Woodfox | Grove Press, 2019
Albert Woodfox spent over forty years in solitary confinement at Angola Prison in Louisiana, the longest known period of solitary in U.S. history. He was a member of the Angola Three, wrongfully convicted of a prison murder in 1972, and finally released in 2016. He organized, educated, and advocated from inside his six-by-nine-foot prison cell for four decades. This book was recommended by Oprah, among others, with good reason. It’s a terrific (and painful) read.
From My Orbit: Voices I Know Personally
These books are self-published by writers who were incarcerated. I include them because I have met these authors or have interviewed them on Just Justice, and think their stories are worth sharing.
Fenced In: Fighting for Freedom April Barber-Scales | Self-published
April Barber-Scales was incarcerated at fifteen while pregnant. She was convicted of murder and served thirty-one and a half years in North Carolina’s prison system before being granted clemency in 2022 through the Juvenile Sentencing Review Board. During her incarceration, she earned a paralegal certificate, was actively involved in her son’s life from prison, and wrote four books. Her case represents exactly what the clemency process is supposed to do: recognize that the person who walks out of prison is not the person who was sentenced. She is now an advocate, a paralegal, and a voice for the people she left behind. She was a guest on Just Justice, in a conversation that I loved.
A Beautiful Pain: The Story of a Violent Juvenile Offender Sentenced to Life in Prison at 16 and His Transformation into a Community Advocate Damon Venable | Self-published, 2025
Damon Venable served thirty-five years in New Jersey prisons after being sentenced to fifty years to life at the age of sixteen. He fought his own case through the courts for years. Today he is a paralegal and Community Affairs and Policy Specialist at the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, and a highly effective advocate for criminal justice reform in the state.
Dear Mama: The Life and Struggles of a Single Mother Bobby Bostic | Self-published 2020
Bobby Bostic was just a teen when he was sentenced to 240 years in prison for a robbery gone wrong in which no one was seriously injured. Bostic has written multiple books, but this one celebrates his mother and her struggles to raise him alone and in poverty. It provides painful insight into the impacts of poverty on children and their families.
Also Worth Reading
These books are among my very favorites. Although they are not written by people with lived prison experience, the authors provide powerful evidence that no person is irredeemable, that second chances are fundamental to human dignity, and that our criminal legal system needs to change.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson. Not a memoir by a formerly incarcerated person, but one of the most important books on second chances ever written. Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, argues with both evidence and moral clarity that the system’s failures are not random. They fall hardest on people who are poor, Black, and without adequate legal representation. This book remains one of my favorites, even after all these years.
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Father Greg Boyle. Boyle founded Homeboy Industries in East Los Angeles, the largest gang intervention and reentry program in the world. This is book of stories about how change is possible when someone refuses to let go. It has been in print for fifteen years because it keeps finding new readers. If you want to understand what a genuine second chance looks like in practice, start here. I love this book.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Michelle Alexander
To deeply understand how we came to be a nation of mass incarceration, we must examine the policies and legal framework that have shaped criminal justice policy. In this best-selling book, Alexander demonstrates that the system functions as a mechanism of racialized control, and calls for a fundamental reevaluation of what counts as justice in this country.
Jessica Henry is a former public defender, professor of justice studies, and attorney. She is the author of Smoke but No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes That Never Happened (UC Press, 2020), served on the New Jersey Governor’s Clemency Advisory Board, and hosts the Just Justice podcast. Her next book, on second chances in the American criminal legal system, is forthcoming from UC Press in 2027. Subscribe to All Things Justice! or head to her website at jessicahenryjustice.com. While you are there, drop her a line if you think she missed a book that should be on this list.