Marc Mauer and Ashley Nellis of The Sentencing Project argue that there is no practical or moral justification for a sentence longer than twenty years. Harsher sentences have been shown to have little effect on crime rates, since people "age out" of crime--meaning that we're spending a fortune on geriatric care for older prisoners who pose little threat to public safety. Extreme punishment for serious crime also has an inflationary effect on sentences...

An ambush on a convoy of limousines turns a romantic rendezvous into a terrorist bloodbath and Doctors Without Borders physician Jonathan Ransom, apprehended by the police and threatened with life imprisonment unless he helps secure his wife Emma's capture, escapes and becomes a spy himself in order to track down Emma and discover the true nature of the conspiracy she appears to be masterminding.

"One teenager in a skirt. One teenager with a lighter. One moment that changes both of their lives forever. If it weren't for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a black teen, lived in the crime-plagued...

This riveting nonfiction book for teens about race, class, gender, crime, and punishment tells the true story of an agender teen who was set on fire by another teen while riding a bus in Oakland, California. One teenager in a skirt. One teenager with a lighter. One moment that changes both of their lives forever. If it weren't for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the...

"When the final gavel clapped in a rural southern courtroom in the summer of 1988, Willie J. Grimes, a gentle spirit with no record of violence, was shocked and devastated to be convicted of first-degree rape and sentenced to life imprisonment. Here is the story of this everyman and his extraordinary quarter-century-long journey to freedom, told in breathtaking and sympathetic detail, from the botched evidence and suspect testimony that led to his...

"Anders Østergaard's...documentary... is a rare and exceptional look into the 2007 uprising in Burma (Myanmar) where 100,000 people, including thousands of Buddhist monks, peacefully took to the streets to protest the country's repressive regime that has held them hostage for over forty years. During the uprising, the military turned their guns on the peaceful protestors, and blood spilled in the streets. Foreign news reporters were banned and the...