A new book, Lethal Rejection: Stories on Crime and Punishment, edit­ed and writ­ten in part by American University crim­i­nol­o­gist Robert Johnson and stu­dent Sonia Tabriz, fea­tures an array of fic­tion and poet­ry on crime and pun­ish­ment writ­ten by pris­on­ers, aca­d­e­mics, and stu­dents of crim­i­nol­o­gy. The book includes a num­ber of sto­ries about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Jocelyn Pollock, Professor of Criminal Justice at Texas State University, writes in the pref­ace, “[H]umans have always used fic­tion to instruct, enlight­en and com­mu­ni­cate. Stories take us to places we haven’t been; they help us to under­stand peo­ple who are not like us. In this book, the authors use fic­tion to con­vey the real­i­ty of prison.” She describes the book’s poet­ry, prose and plays as meth­ods to ​“take the read­er into the ​‘real­i­ty’ of prison and the jus­tice sys­tem – not through facts and fig­ures, but through the tears and screams, blood and pain of the peo­ple chewed up by it.” Todd Clear, a Professor of Criminal Justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, writes, ​“The book makes us encounter the lives of the con­fined in a way I have not expe­ri­enced in any oth­er book about prison life.” The book may be pur­chased here.

(R. Johnson, S. Tabriz, ​“Lethal Rejection: Stories on Crime and Punishment,” Carolina Academic Press, 2009). See Books.

Citation Guide