Review by Eleanor J. Bader
When Emile Suotonye DeWeaver was 13, he dropped out of junior high school and began selling drugs. By 18, he’d murdered a man.
This egregious crime led to DeWeaver’s conviction, and he was sentenced to 67 years to life. It was a sobering event, but this son of a respected Oakland medical doctor determined that incarceration would not be the end of his story. Instead, he would “write himself out of prison.” As unlikely as it sounds, DeWeaver succeeded, and after 21 years of incarceration, California Governor Jerry Brown commuted his sentence in 2014. The reason? As the co-founder of the first Society of Professional Journalists chapter in a prison, his work as a reporter for the San Quentin News, and his co-creation of a group called Prison Renaissance, the state determined that he had been “rehabilitated.”
Ghosts in the Criminal Justice Machine is DeWeaver’s deeply felt story, part memoir and part polemic. Although the former is more effective than the latter, he clearly situates the perpetuation of white supremacy at the heart of carceral and “law-and-order” policies and cogently outlines the ways the criminal legal system uses prison-based educational and recreational programs to keep racist, hierarchical power structures in place. Similarly, his delineation of the ways policing fails to keep communities safe is well-wrought and provocative.
Not everything in the book is as effective, though, and his depiction of a restorative justice model to help perpetrators come to terms with the impact of their crimes can best be read as aspirational. Still, DeWeaver is a terrific writer and bold thinker. His self-reflection and observations about prison, policing, criminal injustice, and the foundational racism that undergirds many US social policies make Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine a valuable contribution to debates about personal responsibility. Moreover, by showcasing the limits of individual, rather than systemic, change, the book makes a clear argument for rethinking crime, punishment and retribution.
Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine: Reform, White Supremacy, and an Abolitionist Future by Emile Suotonye DeWeaver. The New Press, May 2025.
Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.
