In Defense of Criminal Justice Books

I really enjoyed Professor Carissa Hessick’s post in defense of law reviews as well as the resulting thoughtful commentary about the subject.  I don’t necessarily want to engage in that debate, but offer a related defense of books.

Scholars have always written books as well as traditional law review scholarship.  Some books are scholarly, some are not.  Some have price points that only libraries and family relations buy, and some are priced for ordinary readers (or those few people who still buy books).  Some are descriptive, or historical, or critical, or literary, and some are political and of cultural relevance.  I don’t want to generalize because there are over 300,000 books published in the US every year, and many in the legal academy have written, edited, contributed, or enjoyed different types of books.  

But, I do want to comment on a phenomenon in the criminal justice space.  About, how in 2017 books by law professors began driving the national conversation about criminal justice reform.  These books were scholarly and also impactful in terms of generating interest in the ideas they were addressing.  These books were reviewed by mainstream news outlets, and the resulting media coverage elevated both the scholars and their ideas.  While many of these ideas were also featured in law reviews articles, publication of the book provided a broader platform for scholarly ideas and impact.     

Here are a few books from 2017 (and I would encourage others to add to this list):

• Paul Butler, Chokehold: A Renegade Prosecutor’s Radical Thoughts on How to Disrupt the System

• Angela Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment

• Sharon Dolovich & Alexandra Natapof, The New Criminal Justice Thinking

• Cara Drinan, The War on Kids: How Juvenile Justice Lost its Way

• Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement

• James Forman, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America

• Barry Friedman, Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission  

• Brandon Garrett, End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice

• John Pfaff, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration
   

As in all things, one can debate the merits of different forms of scholarship, but I would argue that writing a book offers a form of expertise and legitimacy that while not superior to traditional scholarship has more currency to shape ideas.  In writing about criminal justice reform, the type of format has a distinct advantage in generating interest in the underlying ideas and sometimes changes in law, policy, or consciousness.   

The question for law professors is what are the costs and benefits of this form of scholarship.  Should the recent interest in books shape how professors prioritize their publication choices?  Should this phenomenon be resisted or encouraged by the legal academy?