In A Whole New Way: Undoing Mass Incarceration by a Path Untraveled: Undoing Mass Incarceration by a Path Untraveled

In a Whole New Way is aphotographic self-portrait by New Yorkers who are serving a term of probation.The book also lifts the veil on this “second-chance” justice intervention that hasspread from its origins in 1841 Boston to most of the world today.If all Americansserving a term of probation were gathered in one locale, they would constitutethe third-largest city in the country. Yet few of us understand what thesanction involves. Nor do many Americans realize that the originallyrehabilitative practice became punitive following the 1972–92 crime wave. Inmany jurisdictions, it still is. Probation unfortunately has become a stagingarea for incarceration rather than its alternative.In a Whole New Way shows howhundreds of determined city residents on probation, along with neighborhoodallies, undertook to change this. Equipped with cameras and new artistic sensibilitiesprovided by the editors’ nonprofit Seeing for Ourselves, they set off ina whole new way to reform the sanction of probation, returning it to therehabilitative and positive program it was originally intended to be. In theprocess, they found themselves transformed.The result oftheir journey is this unique collection of stunning photographs, accentuated bydeeply personal captions and lengthier testimonies, that reveal the reality oflife in probation. The stories of these participants powerfully undercut theirown—and probation’s—derogatory popular image. The true goal of this book is toreform the entire justice system toward decarceration.In a Whole New Way is both thesequel to the editors’ Project Lives (2015), the globally acclaimedvolume resulting from a similar effort with New Yorkers living in publichousing—a work catapulting Seeing for Ourselves to the front tier of“participatory photography” practitioners worldwide—and the source of today’saward-winning eponymous documentary film, airing on select public televisionstations in 2023.