Justin Brooks, the director of the California Innocence Project, has spent his career freeing the innocent from prison. He told Everyday Injustice that after 30 years, he decided to put his insights into a book.
His message to all of us: it could happen to anyone—it could happen to you.
At the same time, there are inequities and flaws in the system that disproportionately mean that people of color and the poor get wrongly convicted.
As one review of the book noted, “this book forces us to consider how any of us might be swept up in the system, whether we hired a bad lawyer, bear a slight resemblance to someone else in the world, or are not good with awkward silence.”
Further, “The stories of Brooks’s cases and clients paint the picture of a broken justice system, one where innocence is no protection from incarceration or even the death penalty.”
You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You’re Innocent is available for pre-order now and will be out in the spring of 2023.
