Book Review: Justin Brooks, You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You’re Innocent. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 2023.

Sometimes, the title of a book can disguise what the author's message is, or what the content may be about.However, in the case of Justin Brooks's You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You're Innocent (2023), the title of the book very plainly and clearly spells out what readers will find on its pages, and what Brooks is trying to communicate to readers.Drawing on his experience as the co-founder and director of the California Innocence Project (CIP), the author guides readers through a variety of case studies showing the numerous ways innocent people are wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, such as having inadequate legal representation or falsely confessing.Using the examples of innocent people that he and his team have helped exonerate, he explains the connections between demographics, socioeconomic status, associations, policing standards, evidentiary issues and reliability, and prosecutorial misconduct and politics, and how these factors combine to contribute to wrongful convictions.Perhaps most impactful among his case studies are the stories of those persons, who despite having evidence supporting their innocence, were forced to spend further time incarcerated because of prosecutors insistent on combatting efforts to overturn convictions, and courts that were not receptive to their legal appeals.Some of these people, in what are bittersweet conclusions, are left with the choice of pleading no contest to a crime they did not commit, so that they can assure they will be spend no further time in prison, rather than risk a retrial with an uncertain outcome.