Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair

by Danielle Sered

The award-winning “radically original” (The Atlantic) restorative justice leader, whose work the Washington Post has called “totally sensible and totally revolutionary,” grapples with the problem of violent crime in the movement for prison abolition

In a book Democracy Now! calls a “complete overhaul of the way we’ve been taught to think about crime, punishment, and justice,” Danielle Sered, the executive director of Common Justice and renowned expert on violence, offers pragmatic solutions that take the place of prison, meeting the needs of survivors and creating pathways for people who have committed violence to repair harm. Critically, Sered argues that reckoning is owed not only on the part of individuals who have caused violence, but also by our nation for its overreliance on incarceration to produce safety—at a great cost to communities, survivors, racial equity, and the very fabric of our democracy.

Although over half the people incarcerated in America today have committed violent offenses, the focus of reformers has been almost entirely on nonviolent and drug offenses. Called “innovative” and “truly remarkable” by The Atlantic and “a top-notch entry into the burgeoning incarceration debate” by Kirkus Reviews, Sered’s Until We Reckon argues with searing force and clarity that our communities are safer the less we rely on prisons and jails as a solution for wrongdoing.

Sered asks us to reconsider the purposes of incarceration and argues persuasively that the needs of survivors of violent crime are better met by asking people who commit violence to accept responsibility for their actions and make amends in ways that are meaningful to those they have hurt—none of which happens in the context of a criminal trial or a prison sentence. Critically, Sered argues that the reckoning owed is not only on the part of those who have committed violence, but also by our nation’s overreliance on incarceration to produce safety—at great cost to communities, survivors, racial equity, and the very fabric of our democracy.

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Justice, Politics, Race, Sociology, History, Anti Racist

305 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2019

About the author

Danielle Sered envisioned, launched, and directs Common Justice. She leads the project’s efforts locally and nationally to develop and advance practical and groundbreaking solutions to violence that advance racial equity, meet the needs of those harmed, and do not rely on incarceration.  Before planning the launch of Common Justice, Danielle served as the deputy director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Adolescent Reentry Initiative, a program for young men returning from incarceration on Rikers Island. Prior to joining Vera, she worked at the Center for Court Innovation's Harlem Community Justice Center, where she led its programs for court-involved and recently incarcerated youth.

An Ashoka fellow and Stoneleigh fellow, Danielle received her BA from Emory University and her master's degrees from New York University and Oxford University (UK), where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Her book, Until We Reckon, was honored with the Award for Journalism from the National Association for Community and Restorative Justice and selected by the National Book Foundation for its Literature for Justice recognition. She received the Brown Memorial Baptist Church Extraordinary Woman Award and the 67th Precinct Council Award for Service, given in recognition for leadership in reducing violence in Brooklyn. Danielle has served on the Downstate Coalition for Crime Victims, the New York State Governor’s Council on Reentry and Community Reintegration, and the Executive Session on the Future of Justice Policy in America. Common Justice received the Award for Innovation in Victim Services from the federal Office for Victims of Crime in 2012.

Danielle has been featured widely in the public conversation about mass incarceration and violence, including the Aspen Ideas Festival the Atlantic Magazine Summit on Race and Justice, in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, Democracy Now, NPR, and On Second Thought with Trevor Noah. Danielle is the author of the reports The Other Side of Harm: Addressing Disparities in our Responses to Violence, of Accounting for Violence: How to Increase Safety and Break Our Failed Reliance on Mass Incarceration, and the book Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair.

Reviews

[Lucy Dacus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great intro resource about reshaping America’s reliance on punishment. It doesn’t get into abolition as much as I expected it to, but the scope of the book has to do with violence and mass incarceration as related but different issues. Points that really hit home were how incarceration fails at every level (doesn’t foster healing, make people safer, isn’t cost effective, etc), that accountability infrastructure is possible and effective, and how change will have to happen within culture before it reaches legislation. Sered expresses her thoughts in a helpful and concise way that I’ve found useful when talking about these issue with people that haven’t begun to be interested in them.

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

The United States has one of the highest per-capita criminal incarceration rates in the world, yet the prevalence of violence is relatively high. It's apparent the high incarceration rates are not achieving the desired results.

This book presents the tools and techniques of restorative justice as a proposed alternative to the use of incarceration by the criminal justice system. Restorative justice is a philosophy that aims to repair harm caused by criminal behavior by focusing on the actual needs of victims, offenders, and the community.

The practitioners of restorative justice work to ensure that offenders take responsibility for their actions, to understand the harm they have caused, to give them an opportunity to redeem themselves, and to discourage them from causing further harm. For victims, the goal is to give them an active role in the process, and to reduce feelings of anxiety and powerlessness. I have included a longer description of restorative justice in "message 1" following this review.

The author of this book has for a number of years directed an organization named Common Justice in New York City. The framework they use and that is explored in this book adheres to four core principles: "survivor-centered, accountability-based, safety-driven, and racially equitable."

It's interesting to note that the cost of incarceration is so high that the costs of administering a restorative justice system can be economical by comparison. It also has the additional advantage of low rates of recidivism.

In the book where the author was beginning her discussion of alternatives to incarceration, I found the following excerpt to be a poignant observation about one of the advantages of "whiteness."

... we do have an example of what non-prison-based solutions to crime look like at a systematic level: it is what we do for white kids, and for middle-class and rich white kids in particular. We could reasonably describe whiteness as the oldest alternative to incarceration in America. (p.185)

I was shocked to read the following quote taken from a woman explaining why she didn't report sexual abuse that she experienced as a young person. I think it's an example of the need for the availability of alternative approaches within the criminal justice system.

... I had no interest in my father being incarcerated or my mother being deported or in I being taken away from my family. Even as a child I knew that if I told anyone what was happening in my home, any of these things could have happened ... (p.222)

I have included addition quotations from the book in "message 2" following this review.

[Katie]

If you are interested in social justice regarding mass incarceration, you must read this book! The Director of Common Justice Danielle Sered eloquently explains our need to find restorative alternatives to mass incarceration for violent offenders in the interest of victims/survivors, offenders, communities and all of us. The arguments were so powerful that I had to stop reading and ruminate about them to integrate the ideas into my thinking. Highly recommend!

Thanks to NetGalley, The New Press, and the author Daniell Sered for a digital review copy. This book was first published March 5, 2019.

[Hadiya · Rating 5 out of 5]

EVERYONE should read this book. Trying to figure out how to get your skeptical friends/families to be abolitionists? Read this. Don't consider yourself a prison abolitionist? Read this. Suffering from white guilt and don't know what to do with it? Read this. A crime survivor who is weary about prison abolition? Read this. A law student? Read this. An American? Read this. Everyone should read this.

[Celine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this would make a really great follow-up read to Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Sered makes a compelling argument for steering our criminal justice system toward restorative justice principles and away from an over-reliance on incarceration, using both quantitative data and anecdotal evidence to prove her point. It's a resounding answer to the dreadful "why should we care about addressing people's trauma?" question that seems to permeate traditional discourse on criminal justice reform.

[Penny · Rating 1 out of 5]

The vast majority of sexual abuse survivors never receive anything resembling justice. Ever. My concern about those who promote "restorative justice" for sexual violence is that their moral vanity takes precedence over the feelings and safety of abuse survivors. The Catholic Church practiced "restorative justice" with priests while their victims were told to "forgive" & forget. Most churches claim the moral "high ground" when they "forgive" rapists and child molesters in their ranks. There is no justice without accountability, and part of being held accountable for preying upon vulnerable people is no longer being allowed to prey upon them: that means having your liberty restricted. When we allow rapists and child molesters to go free, we turn the whole world into a prison for women and kids. Whose freedom matters? What if what was taken can never be "restored"? These are the questions I would like to see answered in this book, written by a woman who probably has no registered sex offenders living in her economically privileged neighborhood (the sex offender registry makes it very clear to which neighborhoods violent offenders will be "restored".

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate to give this only two stars but I can't honestly say I liked it. It's an extremely worthwhile topic and Sered is doing great work with Common Justice, her foundation that works to change the current prison system. However, the book itself is too pie-in-the-sky for me. After detailing just how incredibly horrible & miserable the current judicial & prison system is, she proceeds in the second half of the book to list what we "should" do to fix it, without once explaining how on earth all those "shoulds" could possibly come about.

The first half of the book, detailing the miseries upon miseries that exist, I found very difficult to read. I didn't want to read about them and was tempted to put the book down. However, I won an advance copy of this book in a giveaway and thus had promised to both read & review the book. I persevered and kept going.

I thought of the book White Fragility and how I have the privilege to ignore this topic if I so choose. Neither me nor my family are directly impacted by any of the things Sered writes about. None of my family members are in prison. I've never lived in a violent neighborhood. I've always had access to good schools, healthcare, jobs, etc. Violence - knock on wood - has never been a part of my life. I can stick my fingers in my ears and go "la la la" and ignore the situation if I desire. A lot of white people do act this way, which is a big reason why there is so little change in the current situation. I am trying to push against my first reaction, which is to stick my head in the sand.

The second half of the book is the part that really bugged me. Her solutions are all great ideas that should happen - eliminating 3 strikes & you're out, reclassifying a wide range of felonies, creating incentives for community program participation, reducing collateral consequences such as denying ex-convicts the right to vote, denying them student loans, food stamps, section 8 housing etc. Ok, so how do we concretely go about implementing all these changes? Who knows! Sered sure doesn't. What needs to happen, according to her, is "a massive cultural reorientation". That's it. Just somehow, someway, the current American culture needs to dramatically change. Yeah, obviously.

It's all very "if I were Queen of the World" then this is how it would be. I actually came out of reading this more depressed about the situation than I was before reading. If our only hope for change is some magical massive cultural reorientation, then we are screwed.

[Margaret Pollack · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good. Through an exploration of restorative justice history, practices and examples, Sered offers not just an alternative to our punishment-based justice system, but also a path for us as a society to apply restorative justice to our history and systems of slavery and mass incarceration to actually take accountability for and reckon with the violence and harm we have inflicted.

[Ai Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh this book is critical. Sered manages to get deep at the heart of issues around incarceration, punishment, and accountability in a way that is so clear and insightful and cuts right to the quick. Starting with both how our current criminal law system fails survivors and how we can and should better attend to the harm of survivors, she manages to ground her criticism and analysis in such a way that really reveals the weaknesses in our current system.

The chapter on accountability alone should be required reading for literally everyone; I think a lot about accountability now that we are shifting from discussing incarceration as "justice" towards discussing it as "accountability" (in particular in the wake of the Derek Chauvin trial,) and I wish I had read this book before that because it manages to make very clear why incarceration is NOT accountability and shows both how difficult real accountability is, and how transformative it can be for all parties involved. Sered manages to showcase a number of different examples from her work at Common Justice that really show off the possibilities of restorative justice practices in so many powerful and important ways.

I think it's also a great option for people who know we have to tackle issues around prison but are maybe not abolitionist (Sered doesn't describe herself in the text as having an abolitionist perspective, and within the book says things about the necessity of police and the occasional necessity of prison,) and have questions about how we might go about grappling with "violent crime" and violence more generally. I do want to like hand out this book to different people to start conversations, and even though I wouldn't call it an abolitionist text, I would absolutely demand fellow abolitionists read it for its insights on accountability and harm.

[Cal Barnett-Mayotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sered makes the most compelling and thoughtful case for a path forward, for both interpersonal and state violence, both individual and societal justice. Remarkably thorough and oozes wisdom.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

i’m more than a little embarrassed to say that while reading this book, i realized i didn��t really understand what restorative justice is, and what real alternatives there are to prison that both seek to correct the hurt and harm survivors experience. this book took me a while to get into, i was impatient for the “policy” proposals, but it was profoundly illuminating

h/t nick b for the rec from ages ago!!

[Lori Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another very important read.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be required reading for everyone everywhere! Incredibly written distillation of what it means to hold ourselves accountable and work to recognize and heal individual and community trauma.

[Christopher Hudson Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

People familiar with the uncomfortable details of mass incarceration know that meaningful reform in the US will require us to reevaluate how we respond specifically to violent crime. Because incarceration is the default in our criminal justice system, it can be difficult for people to conceptualize any realistic alternatives, especially for perpetrators of serious violence. Until We Reckon bravely tackles this question head on. Instead of punishment for punishment’s sake, author Danielle Sered proposes restorative justice that centers around the needs of victims of violence. Contrary to “tough on crime” rhetoric, Sered uses research, along with her amazing work with Common Justice, to show how prisons fail to adequately provide healing to survivors or hold perpetrators accountable, often by design. What results from actually taking these values seriously will likely surprise many readers. Sered’s compelling book will at the very least force readers to reconsider if cycles of violence, that predominantly effect marginalized communities, can truly be solved by simply inflicting more violence. Until We Reckon isn’t about being soft on crime, it’s about being serious about justice.

[Nadav David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant book that uncovers the ways our society's obsession with locking people in cages, especially POC, poor and trans/GNC folks, destroys our ability to face and heal from harm that occurs in our communities. Sered provides a powerful framework and narratives to speak to the power of restorative and transformative justice practices, and is especially focused on violent crimes, which feels missing in so much of the liberal/moderate conversations about mass incarceration. So many nuggets of wisdom in this book, highly recommend it especially for people addressing harm and accountability and those working to end our reliance on law enforcement and prisons to keep our communities safe.

[Sivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good, and great use of analogies throughout the book. People will argue against methods other than incarceration because we don't have much evidence to support them (but we do have some!), but how could we have a ton of good evidence to argue with when incarceration is often the only option offered? This book presents the evidence we have and helps envision a world where incarceration is a scarcely used option. Of course, some of the data may be biased since the sampling of people who are offered or choose restorative justice options is likely(?) not random, but this does not make the evidence less convincing. Even if these people are only satisfied with the process because of something about them, it is still worth a shot to expand these programs.

It was outside of the scope of this book, but I would be interested in learning more about restorative justice in cases other than those handled by Common Justice (for example, in crimes where the people know one another well).


Quotes:
"On the individual level, violence is driven by shame, isolation, exposure to violence, and an inability to meet one's economic needs: factors that are also the core features of imprisonment. This means that the core national violence prevention strategy relies on a tool that has at its basis the central drivers of violence."

"More than 2.3 million people are behind bars on any given day, and the number of Black people incarcerated or under correctional control exceeds the total number of adults enslaved nationwide in 1861. A Black boy born today has a one in three chance of going to prison in his lifetime."

"[M]ore than 60% of incarcerated women have children, and more than 40% were primary caregivers for their children before being incarcerated."

"Over the past three decades, state and local government expenditures on jails and prisons have increased roughly three times as fast as spending on elementary and secondary education. As a nation, we spend more than 80 billion dollars a year on incarceration. One of the only things we spend more on than prisons is war."

"For instance, at Common Justice, the vast majority of victims who have been given the choice of seeing the person who harmed them incarcerated or seeing them take part in an alternate restorative justice process have chosen the alternate process. All of these survivors are people who participated in the criminal justice system. They are among the less than half of victims who called the police, and are part of the even smaller subgroup who continued their engagement through the grand jury process. They are people who initially chose a path that could lead to prison... Even among these victims, when another option is offered, 90% choose something other than that very incarceration they were initially pursuing. ... As a country, we have failed to provide victims of violence with real options, other than incarceration, to hold the person who harmed them accountable. ... What survivors choose when they have only one option [(incarceration)] does not predict what they will want when multiple options are present. Absent other options, when we ask victims, 'Do you want incarceration?', we are essentially asking, 'Do you want something or nothing?', and we know that when any of us are hurt, we want, we need something. But if instead of asking 'Do you want something or nothing?', we ask, 'Do you want this intervention or that prison?', many victims want the intervention."

"Survivors who have taken part in restorative [justice] processes in the United States have reported 80-90% rates of satisfaction, as compared with satisfaction rates of about 30% for traditional court systems. More recently, restorative justice programs have also been shown to significantly reduce post-traumatic stress symptoms in survivors. A study by the University of Pennsylvania that examined restorative justice programs found that robbery, assault, and burglary victims who took part in them reported 37% fewer symptoms of post-traumatic stress than those who participated in standard court processes."

"According to The Sentencing Project, one in every thirteen Black adults cannot vote as the result of a felony conviction. And in four states (Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia), more than one in five Black adults is disenfranchised."

[L Y N N · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must-read and makes the case for cultural change through true "accountability," not just punishment marketed as 'accountability'. As a culture, 'America' must acknowledge and deal with not only its racist past, but the continuing systemic racism and classism that persists. By separating people of color and poor white folks into supposedly oppositional groups, the rich white guys have managed to maintain control. It is time for a true "reckoning" on so many levels to finally establish true "equity" within our culture. We must recognize the ineffectiveness and manipulative oppression of the U.S. mass incarceration system and deal with it. Not just change it, but build up viable alternatives so that an upgraded and much more effective 'justice' system can be established and used only as a last resort. READ THIS! It totally makes sense. Our incarceration system is based upon and perpetuates violence. Violence is what must be prevented and our current criminal 'justice' system simply continues and heightens it, compounding the harm to perpetrators and victims. No person is disposable.

[Hannah Bach · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was recommended this book by my social policy professor after I wrote a paper on the social issue of mass incarceration. This book was enlightening in its discussion of how to seek out repair in a broken criminal justice system and has some thought provoking ideas on what restorative justice looks like.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read to get a broader understanding of how our justice system is broken and not achieving what is best for society.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of case studies and well-defined theses on white society's obligation to face its obsession with violence and punishment and start putting effort into healing and community building at all levels from school suspensions to incarceration for violent offenses.

[Renny Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was a but slow at first but you needed the base of understanding the relationships between the harmed and those who harm to understand how effective reformative justice can be. I wish there were more anecdotes about some of the people who have gone through common justice

[Joshua Glasgow · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s going to take me a while to write a full review because I saved so many quotes… it’s going to be a long one. For now, I’m going to post what I wrote on Facebook when I was about 39% done with the book. My completed review will probably say a lot of this same stuff:

I’m not even halfway done reading this book yet but I think it might be the best book I’ve ever read??

Sered is methodically, rigorously breaking down every conceivable argument in favor of prison and incarceration, explaining how at every stage our “justice” system not only fails to achieve the benefits it purports to but actively worsens the problems it is claiming to solve. Her writing is so clear-eyed and direct that everything she writes, as soon as you read it, it seems so obvious and sensible. She’s not afraid to call our current system what it is—deeply immoral—but she does this not from a place of righteous rage but makes the assessment with a clinical certainty that is almost twice as damning.

Every page in this book has powerful, straightforward, highly persuasive facts and arguments showing why ending mass incarceration is necessary not just for the sake of those imprisoned but for the victims of crime and for society at large—and Sered does this by facing head-on what other abolitionist writers sometimes seem reluctant to spend too much time addressing: violent crime. Incarceration is not a solution to violence, period.

Even as she calls out the current state of our “justice” system for being unethical, Sered’s call for prison abolition is not mainly grounded in some abstract moral imperative, but in sharp pragmatism. “This is not mostly about mercy . . . Survivors�� safety and well-being depends on the efficacy of our response to violence.”

UNTIL WE RECKON is a stunning, transformative work. Consider it essential reading. You NEED to read this book.

[Jake Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 1st half, on the origins of American violence and the failures of the US prison system, is fabulous*. The 2nd half, on how to move forward, is vague to the point of vacuity. Defining a problem is so much easier than proposing a solution.

* What I took from the 1st half: Violence is often a reaction to the shame of powerlessness and the denial of pain. Powerlessness and brutish non-pain are embedded in the American myths of (a) colonial manifest destiny in a backdrop of white supremacy, and (b) white men saving white women from animalistic black men. So American culture, and not just American history and economics, fosters violence. Once violence occurs, the 4 main justifications for prison -- deterrence, rehab, incapacitation, revenge -- are not served by prison. Deterrence fails because folks don't know sentencing and are hopeless anyway; rehab is not served by incarceration; incapacitation rarely boosts safety because felons are just one piece of an ecology and will return anyway; and vengeance fades long before terms end. Instead, incarceration (a) insulates felons from acknowledging and repairing the human impacts of their crimes, and (b) promotes the shame and powerlessness and rage that leads to more violence.

[Heather KD · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I have the highest regard for Michelle Alexander and her ground-breaking book of 2010, "The New Jim Crow", Danielle Sered's work takes the conversation about race and mass incarceration to another level. Sered makes necessary connections between the criminal justice system in the United States and the wider culture of violence--and her clear analysis enables her to propose real solutions to violence on both an interpersonal and system level. Plus, Sered's entire argument begins and ends with the experiences of those who have been on the receiving end of violence. She takes a hard look at what healing from traumatic experiences requires and builds her work on that foundation. And while this book does not center on Sered's personal narrative in the way that Bryan Stevenson's "Just Mercy" does, it is full of compelling stories that have emerged from Sered's amazing restorative justice work with her organization, Common Justice. Sered's writing is nothing short of brilliant--clear, compelling and precise. I highly recommend this book to anyone with a conscience.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

rarely have I read a book where almost every paragraph shook me. the truly radical ideas about healing, transformation, accountability, and trauma articulated so many things I felt but had never seen written or presented so clearly. will definitely get a reread and a permanent place on my bookshelf. cannot recommend highly enough. (p.s. if you're having doubts because Sered is white... oh buddy. no punches pulled on the takedown of white supremacy in this book. loved it.)

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book affirmed everything I already believed about mass incarceration and gave me the vocabulary to describe the more just alternatives that I knew were out there. It was a bit of a slog for me at times, but absolutely worth reading for anyone who might consider themselves a prison abolitionist or who wants to know more about how we get away from mass incarceration (or who just wants to be better equipped for fighting with conservatives lol). Highly recommend.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. This book was full of mind blowing information. It took me a while to read purely because there were so many “oh wow” moments that I really wanted to sit with and process.

I think my biggest takeaways were:

Violence is caused by isolation, shame, poverty and/or prior exposure to violence. So as a society we will need to address these issues in order to truly prevent violence.

Our prison system fails to hold perpetrators of violence accountable to their victims.

Restorative Justice is a much more effective way to provide accountability, closure and healing for the victims while also being much more effective at preventing recidivism for offenders.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fortunate enough to receive this in a giveaway on Goodreads. I also think this is a great introduction to restorative justice for people who do not know much about it or is skeptical about its use for violent offenses.

[Julie Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A heartbreaking picture of the current criminal justice system and how we got to mass incarceration as a nation. My first foray into alternative restorative justice practices and it was so informative. I couldn’t recommend this book more!

[Bridget · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important for the 2020 election

Read this before considering your vote. This book helps me move through fear and into action. Will read it again.