Oh this book is critical. Sered manages to get deep at the heart of issues around incarceration, punishment, and accountability in a way that is so clear and insightful and cuts right to the quick. Starting with both how our current criminal law system fails survivors and how we can and should better attend to the harm of survivors, she manages to ground her criticism and analysis in such a way that really reveals the weaknesses in our current system. 

The chapter on accountability alone should be required reading for literally everyone; I think a lot about accountability now that we are shifting from discussing incarceration as "justice" towards discussing it as "accountability" (in particular in the wake of the Derek Chauvin trial,) and I wish I had read this book before that because it manages to make very clear why incarceration is NOT accountability and shows both how difficult real accountability is, and how transformative it can be for all parties involved. Sered manages to showcase a number of different examples from her work at Common Justice that really show off the possibilities of restorative justice practices in so many powerful and important ways. 

I think it's also a great option for people who know we have to tackle issues around prison but are maybe not abolitionist (Sered doesn't describe herself in the text as having an abolitionist perspective, and within the book says things about the necessity of police and the occasional necessity of prison,) and have questions about how we might go about grappling with "violent crime" and violence more generally. I do want to like hand out this book to different people to start conversations, and even though I wouldn't call it an abolitionist text, I would absolutely demand fellow abolitionists read it for its insights on accountability and harm.