Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.

FEATURING DANIELLE ALLEN – The statistics around mass incarceration in the US are depressing. We are a nation that imprisons more people than any other, despite stated ideals about freedom and democracy. It has become all-too-easy to reduce the individuals who are impacted as merely numbers.

A new book tells the heart-breaking story of a young man who entered the criminal justice system when he was only 15, caught in California’s Three Strikes dragnet. Written by his cousin, it is a true story – one that is related from the point of view of a family member who feels helpless to stop the trajectory of a life ruined.

It is also a cautionary tale about the lives that our misguided “war on drugs,” and our vast system of mass incarceration swallows up and destroys.

Danielle Allen, James Conant Bryant University Professor at Harvard University, author of “Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defence of Equality, and winner of the Parkman Prize. Her new book is called Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.