really well done--similarly to the struggle for taiwan, makes a concept that can feel quite inaccessible feel easy to digest. it wasn't especially revolutionary for me, but i think it would be a really good recommendation for people not previously critical of the critical justice system or the police, as i think it would successfully alert everyone to a certain degree of injustice in the system and potentially lead them down the path toward abolitionist thinking. it's so easy to forget that there are humans behind every step of the system, and not only do humans make mistakes, but they also make intentional mistakes, and that is extremely on display in this book. also, reading about the reid technique genuinely made me feel ill. 

"I once heard a stunning presentation by Bill thompson, a professor at UC Irvine, about bias in so-called scientific testing. He showed slide after slide of police officers who had given information to crime lab technicians that led to inaccurate results. One of the slides was a note from a technician to a detective saying, ''I've done the testing several times, but it keeps coming out wrong. It keeps not matching your subject.' That is not science" (116).

"In the 1969 case of Frazier v. Cupp, police officers lied to a suspect, falsely telling him that his codefendant confessed. The Supreme Court validated lying to suspects, stating 'The fact that the police misrepresented the statements that Rawls had made is, while relevant, insufficient in our view to make this otherwise voluntary confession inadmissible'" (147).

"Synthesized testimony occurs when police or prosecutors take witnesses who initially provided details helpful to the suspect and, convinced because of tunnel vision that the witness must be wrong, ask pointed questions of the witness suggesting that his or her memory is off. Some witnesses take the cue and begin to question their memory. Sometimes they will change their statements to correspond with what is clear the police believe must have happened" (160).