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Resources for Transformative Justice and Police Reform

This bibliography offers readings on transformative justice and police reform as a resource for the 2022-2023 Campus Community Book Project (CCBP) discussion on the topic, and accompaniment to the Project’s featured book, Defund Fear: Safety Without Policing, Prisons, and Punishment by Zach Norris.

General

  • Bliss, L. (2020, September 21). A Bike Violation Brings on a Police Shooting of a Black Man. Bloomberg. 
  • Board, E. (2021, March 16). Opinion:  Police reform is not enough. We need to rethink public safety. The Washington Post.
  • Brooks, R. (2021). Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City. Penguin.
  • Brown, A. M. (2020). We Will Not Cancel Us:  And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice. AK Press.
  • Davis, A. (2018). Policing Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment. Pantheon.
  • Forman Jr., J. (2018). Locking Up Our Own:  Crime and Punishment in Black America. Farrar, Strauss, Giroux.
  • Hinton, E. (2021). America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s. Liveright Publishing.
  • Horace, M. (2019). The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement. Hachette Books.
  • Hubler, S. (2021, February 17). Protestors Urged Defunding the Police. Schools in Big Cities Are Doing It (K. Taylor, Trans.). The New York Times.
  • Kaba, M. (2021). We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice. Haymarket Books Inc.
  • Karakatsanis, A. (2019). Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System. The New Press.
  • Law, V. (2021). “Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration. Beacon Press.
  • Leovy, J. (2015). Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America. Speigel & Grau.
  • McKesson, D. (2019). On the Other Side of Freedom: Race and Justice in a Divided America. Penguin.
  • Montross, C. (2021). Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration. Penguin.
  • Neocleous, M. (2021). A Critical Theory of Police Power: The Fabrication of the Social Order. Verso.
  • NPR. (n.d.). Video:  History of Policing: How Did We Here? NPR. NPR. Retrieved October 31, 2022.
  • Osborne, S. (2016). The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop. Doubleday.
  • Readings, Training, and Resources: Living Bibliography. (2021, April 8). UC Davis Leadership.
  • Ritchie, A. (2017). Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color. Beacon Press.
  • Thom, K. C. (2019). I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s notes from the End of the World. Arsenal Pulp Press.
  • Vitale, A. (2018). The End of Policing. Verso.
  • Ward, J. (2017). Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel. Scribner.
  • Watanabe, T. (2021, February 3). Defund or reform UC campus police? Sharp disagreement surfaces. Los Angeles Times.
  • Wilson, C. (2020). The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose. G.P. Putnam Sons.

Biographical Books

  • Domanick, J. (1994). To Protect and to Serve: The LAPD’s Century of War in the City of Dreams. Pocket Books.
  • Quinn, M. (2011). Walking with the Devil: The Police Code of Silence: What Bad Cops Don’t Want You to Know and Good Cops Won’t Tell You. Quinn and Associates.

California

  • Department of Justice, S. of C. (2021). California Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board Releases Fourth Annual RIPA Report. Office of the Attorney General.
  • Doucette, S., Hussain, M. I., Kulkarni, S., Latimer, K., Lawlor, A., Mai, A., Tasistro-Hart, A., & Zulian, M. (2021). Policing in the University of California (pp. 1–31). UAW 2856.
  • Jones, N., Roberson, R., & Settles-Tidwell, M. (2020). Annual Report (2019-2020) (pp. 1–96). Chancellor’s Independent Advisory Board on Police Accountability and Community Safety.
  • Office of the Attorney General, S. of C. D. of J. (2021). California Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board Releases Fourth Annual RIPA Report (No. 4; RIPA Report). State of California Department of Justice Office of the Attorney General.
  • Office of the President, U. of C. (2020). University of California Presidential Task Force on Universitywide Policing Implementation Report. University of California Office of the President.
  • Report of the Task Force on Next Generation Reforms to Advance Campus Safety (pp. 1–160) (2021). University of California.
  • Reynoso Task Force. (2011). The Reynoso Task Force Report. University of California, Davis.
  • Watanabe, T. (2021, February 3). Defund or reform UC campus police?  Sharp disagreement surfaces. Los Angeles Times.

Constitutional Law

  • Davis, S. (2008). Corwin and Peltason’s Understanding the Constitution. Thomas/Wadsworth.
  • Domino, J. C. (2010). Civil Rights and Liberties in the 21st Century. Longman.

Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights

  • Civil Rights Division. (2012). Portland Police Bureau: Findings Letter (2012). U.S. Department of Justice.
  • Civil Rights Division. (2016). Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department. U.S. Department of Justice.

Independent Commissions

  • Citizen’s Commission on Jail Violence. (2012). Los Angeles County Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence. Los Angeles County.
  • Office of Justice Programs. (1996). Five Years Later: A Report to the Los Angeles Police Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department’s Implementation of Independent Commission Recommendations. U.S. Department of Justice.
  • President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. (2015). Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing: Implementation Guide Moving from Recommendations to Action. U.S. Department of Justice.

Scholarly Sources

  • Balto, S. (2020). Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power. University of North Carolina.
  • Gilmore, R. W. (2007). Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. University of California Press.
  • Hayes, C. (2018). A Colony in a Nation. W.W. Norton & Company.
  • Hinton, E. (2017). From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. Harvard University Press.
  • Leonardo, Z., & Porter, R. (2010). Pedagogy of fear: Toward a Fanonian theory of “safety” in race dialogue. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 13, 139–157.
  • Livingston, D. (2004). The Unfulfilled promise of Citizen Review. Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, 653–669.
  • Merrick, B. (2003). Civilian Oversight of the Police in the United States. Saint Louis University Public Law Review, 22(1).
  • Nelson, J. (2001). Police Brutality: An Anthology. W.W. Norton & Company.
  • Schwartz, J. C. (2012). What Police Learn from Lawsuits. Cardoza Law Review, 841.
  • Zimring, F. E. (2017). When Police Kill. Harvard University Press.