NPAP presents our summer reading recommendations, featuring authors and experts who challenge our perspectives on policing and the criminal legal system, offer blueprints for change, and inspire us to imagine and work for a better tomorrow.
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TO READ
Hope in the Dark
Rebecca Solnit
“This is the ultimate ‘feel-good’ book for exhausted campaigners and activists . . . an intensely personal account, a meditation on activism and hope.”
-The Guardian
Originally written in 2004, this book’s message of hope is particularly salient at this moment. Solnit reminds us of our progress and the bigger context of movements, and makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. A salve and inspiration to stay hopeful and active in these difficult times.
Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People are Dismantling Mass Incarceration
Jocelyn Simonson
An original argument that the answer to mass incarceration lies not with experts and pundits, but with ordinary people taking extraordinary actions together.
#SAYHERNAME: Black Women’s Stories of Police Violence and Public Silence
Kimberlé Crenshaw and the African American Policy Forum
Often overlooked and unnamed in the movement, Black women are too often the victims of police violence. Centering Black women’s experiences, this book remembers the lives lost through the voices of the mothers and sisters they left behind.
The End of Policing
Alex S. Vitale
Drawing on firsthand research from across the globe, Vitale shows how the implementation of alternatives to policing has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice.
Becoming Abolitionists
Derecka Purnell
A personal story about how the author and a generation of activists became abolitionists. Becoming Abolitionists shows that abolition is not solely about getting rid of police, but a commitment to create and support different answers to the problem of harm in society, and an opportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the first place.
Break the Wheel
Keith Ellison
With this powerful and intimate trial diary, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison asks the key question: How do we break the wheel of police violence and finally make it stop? This riveting account of the Derek Chauvin trial offers revelations for a defining, generational moment of racial reckoning and social justice understanding.
Anti-Racist Ally
Sophie Williams
This pocket-sized primer unpacks complex topics into their most important concepts and provides a crucial starting point for every anti-racist ally.
Are Prisons Obsolete?
Angela Davis
This short impassioned argument for prison abolition challenges us to confront the human rights catastrophe in our prisons.
Witness
Lyle C. May
An insider’s account of death row, May’s grounded writings challenge the myths, misconceptions, and misinformation about the criminal legal system and death in prison.
America on Fire
Elizabeth Hinton
Professor Hinton argues that we cannot understand the civil rights struggle without coming to terms with the uprisings and hugely expanding police regime that followed it. She asserts the word riot is nothing less than a racist trope applied to events that can only be properly understood as rebellions—explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order.
No More Police
Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie
This powerful call to action details why policing doesn’t stop violence, instead perpetuating widespread harm. The authors outline the many failures of contemporary police reforms and explore demands to defund police, divest from policing, and invest in community resources to create greater safety.
An Abolitionist's Handbook
Patrisse Cullors
The co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter shows us how we can effectively fight for an abolitionist present and future. This book is for those who are looking to reimagine a world where communities are treated with dignity, care, and respect.
TO WATCH
When They See Us
Ava DuVernay
This 4-part Emmy-nominated miniseries directed by Ava DuVernay is based on the true story of the Central Park Five, five teenagers of color convicted of a rape they did not commit and the system that convicted them.
13th
Ava DuVernay
In this documentary directed by Ava DuVernay, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom. The title refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution which abolished slavery throughout the U.S. and ended involuntary servitude, except as punishment for convicted criminals.
TO LISTEN
1619
In August of 1619 a ship carrying more than 20 enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia. 250 years of slavery in America followed. This is that story. A New York Times audio series hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Slow Burn #6: The LA Uprisings
In 1992, the four LA cops who’d been captured on video beating Rodney King walked free. This is the story of the people and events behind the biggest civil disturbance in American history that resulted. Produced by Slate and hosted by Joel Anderson.
Broken Doors
This 6-part investigative podcast from the Washington Post sheds light on how easy it is to plan, obtain and execute no-knock warrants - one of the most intrusive and dangerous police tactics.