In Their Names: The Untold Story of Victims? Rights, Mass Incarceration, and the Future of Public Safety

Hailed as “a passionate and provocative indictment of how the victims’ rights movement has warped the American justice system” (Publishers Weekly), In Their Names dispels the myth that mass incarceration benefits victims, and proposes a new public safety paradigm that recognizes victims’ true safety needs.

Lenore Anderson, whom the distinguished criminologist David Kennedy calls “one of the most effective criminal justice reformers America has ever had,” demonstrates how, in the 1980s, victims’ rights political activism morphed into a demand for more incarceration “in their names,” while bringing about policies that fuel more trauma than they heal. Called “well-researched, results-driven, and readable” by Booklist, In Their Names “deserves a wide audience, from policymakers to ordinary citizens alike,” according to James Forman Jr., Yale Law School professor and author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Locking Up Our Own.

At a time when U.S. crime policy is increasingly debated in politics and media, the lessons and message of this book are current—and urgent. As renowned criminal justice author Nell Bernstein writes, Anderson “offers a vision of justice and healing that is generous enough to encompass all of us.”

Now available in an accessible paperback format, this “startling wake-up call” (Susan Burton) argues persuasively for closing the gap between our public safety systems and victims, to heal cycles of violence and enhance public safety for all.

A former punk drummer turned prosecutor, Lenore Anderson is the founder and president of the Alliance for Safety and Justice. She is a former chief of policy at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, former director of public safety for the Oakland mayor, and the recipient of a James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award and a Frank Carrington Crime Victim Attorney Award. She lives in Oakland, California.