by George Kennan (Author), George Frost (Illustrator), Graeme Newman (Introduction)

SIBERIA AND THE EXILE SYSTEM — VOLUME TWO
By George Kennan
Extensively Illustrated
Designed, Modernized and Edited with an Introduction by Graeme R. Newman

The journey becomes an indictment.

In Volume One, George Kennan crossed the immense Siberian frontier, increasingly questioning the Russian Empire's system of exile and punishment. In Volume Two, those doubts disappear forever.

Travelling thousands of miles farther into Eastern Siberia, Kennan reaches the most feared destinations of Imperial Russia—the remote prisons, penal settlements, and infamous katorga mines of the Trans-Baikal. Here he encounters political prisoners, hardened convicts, prison officials, and ordinary Siberians whose lives have been shaped by one of history's harshest systems of punishment.

What he witnesses is both shocking and meticulously documented. Kennan examines overcrowded prisons, disease, forced labour, administrative exile without trial, brutal punishments, and the daily struggle for survival endured by men and women banished to the edge of the known world. Drawing upon official government records, personal interviews, and his own observations, he constructs a devastating portrait of a penal system that profoundly altered Western understanding of Tsarist Russia.

Yet Volume Two is more than an exposé. Kennan remains a gifted travel writer whose vivid descriptions of Siberia's mountains, forests, rivers, settlements, and extraordinary people transform this work into one of the greatest travel narratives ever written. The breathtaking beauty of the landscape stands in haunting contrast to the suffering concealed within it.

This new 2026 edition has been carefully designed and extensively edited for the modern reader while preserving Kennan's original voice and historical integrity. OCR errors have been corrected, typography modernized, and the narrative presented in a clear, readable format, while retaining the rich illustrations that accompanied the original publication.

More than a century after its first appearance, Siberia and the Exile System remains one of the most important eyewitness investigations ever published—a work of journalism whose influence reached far beyond Russia and helped expose a penal regime that much of the world preferred not to see.

Together, Volumes One and Two form one of the greatest works of investigative travel writing and prison history ever written—an unforgettable journey into the frozen heart of the Russian Empire.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 284p.

by George Kennan (Author), George Frost (Illustrator), Graeme Newman (Introduction)

SIBERIA AND THE EXILE SYSTEM — VOLUME ONE
By George Kennan. Extensively Illustrated. Designed, Modernized and Edited with an Introduction by Graeme R. Newman

In 1885, American journalist and explorer George Kennan journeyed deep into the Russian Empire intending to investigate—and, in many respects, defend—the notorious Siberian exile system. What he discovered changed his mind completely.

Siberia and the Exile System became one of the nineteenth century’s most influential works of investigative journalism: a firsthand account of prisons, convict transports, political exile, arbitrary banishment, and life on the immense Siberian frontier. Kennan entered Russia initially skeptical of reports of government brutality. Eighteen months later, after visiting prisons, traveling with convicts, examining official records, and speaking privately with political exiles, he emerged as one of the system’s most formidable critics.

Volume One follows Kennan and artist George A. Frost from St. Petersburg across the Urals and into Siberia. Their journey takes them through the Tiumen forwarding prison, aboard a Siberian convict barge, across the vast Kirghis steppe, into the Altai, and through settlements populated by men and women banished by administrative order—sometimes without trial or even a formal criminal charge. It concludes with Kennan’s investigations in Tomsk and his increasingly disturbing encounters with the machinery of exile.

Yet this is far more than a catalogue of suffering. Kennan was an accomplished travel writer with an extraordinary eye for landscape and character. Siberian villages, endless roads, river journeys, frontier inns, officials, peasants, prisoners and revolutionaries emerge vividly from his narrative. Humor and adventure repeatedly interrupt the darkness, making the eventual revelations about imprisonment and exile all the more powerful.

Of particular importance is Kennan’s changing perspective. He began his investigation believing that Russia and its penal system had been unfairly represented and that many revolutionaries were simply dangerous fanatics. His own observations progressively undermined those assumptions. The result is the unusual spectacle of an investigator changing his conclusions because the evidence before him demanded it.

This new 2026 edition has been designed and extensively edited for the contemporary reader while preserving Kennan’s narrative voice and historical testimony. It is extensively illustrated, drawing the reader visually into the extraordinary landscapes, journeys, prisons, settlements and people Kennan encountered.

At once travel narrative, prison exposé, political history and eyewitness investigation, Siberia and the Exile Systemremains a disturbing examination of what happens when punishment is removed from public view and political authority acquires the power to make inconvenient people disappear.

Volume One begins the journey. Volume Two carries Kennan deeper into Eastern Siberia and toward the dreaded katorga mines of the Trans-Baikal.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 284p.

By Gillian Buck, Philippa Tomczak

 Prison regulators across scales hold potential to illuminate harms of imprisonment and influence alternatives, yet criminologists rarely engage with these mechanisms. We analyse prisoners’ participatory roles in the ‘transformative’ Corston Report (2007) and The Corston Report 10 Years On, using actor-network-theory to guide document analysis. Corston called for a radically different, woman-centred approach to criminal justice, but women’s voices were often peripheral, or they were constructed as ‘pathetic’. There is unrealised potential for regulatory efforts to network imprisoned women and their families with other regulators, deepening understanding of problems connected to prisons, for broader social benefit.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 64(3), 405-414.

By Ray  Madding  Mcconnell

Ray Madding McConnell’s Criminal Responsibility and Social Constraint first appeared in 1912 as one of the more philosophically ambitious works of the American Progressive Era. Though rarely cited today, the book occupies a fascinating place in the early twentieth-century dialogue between philosophy, criminology, and legal reform. Its author, who died shortly before the book’s publication, taught social ethics at Harvard and belonged to a generation deeply convinced that clearer thought could repair the accumulating confusions of modern criminal law. His book is therefore both a legacy and an argument: a legacy of Progressive rationalism and an argument for reconsidering the foundations of punishment in an age increasingly aware of causation, psychology, and social science.

More than a century after its publication, Criminal Responsibility and Social Constraint offers a valuable perspective for scholars, legal theorists, and reformers. It is a window into the moment when American thought on crime and punishment began to absorb scientific psychology, social statistics, and philosophical determinism. It presents an early, coherent version of a consequentialist theory of punishment that still structures major parts of modern practice. And it invites readers to confront the perennial tension between causation and accountability: how can a society committed to science and determinism still punish, censure, and regulate?

McConnell’s answer is that responsibility is a socially constructed tool—one that must be justified by its utility rather than by metaphysical claims about freedom. Whether one accepts or contests that answer, it remains a stimulus to deeper thinking about the moral and practical foundations of the criminal law. In that sense, McConnell’s book continues to speak forcefully to our age, reminding us that the architecture of justice must rest on reasons we can defend, not merely on traditions we have inherited.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. p.234.

By John Eric Humphries,, Cécile Macaire,, Aurélie Ouss,, Megan Stevenson,, Winnie van Dijk,

Using newly-linked administrative and commercial data from Virginia spanning 25 years, we study the consequences of incarceration. While previous research has examined labor market outcomes and recidivism, we focus on two of the primary channels through which low-income households build wealth: asset ownership (homes and cars) and human capital formation. To identify causal effects, we use a matched differencein-differences design. In line with much of the literature on the impact of incarceration in the U.S., we find no evidence of scarring effects on labor market outcomes or changes in recidivism beyond the incapacitation period. However, we find that incarceration leads to a persistent reduction in asset accumulation: seven years after sentencing, homeownership has declined by 1.1 percentage points (12.1%) and car ownership by 2.7 percentage points (18.1%). Incarceration also lowers human capital formation, reducing college enrollment by 1.4 percentage points (15.1%).

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers. 2859.

New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2025. 70p.

By Laura McFeely

In the last decade, the United States has seen a wave of efforts to greatly reduce or eliminate the use of solitary confinement. In the light of growing international recognition that such treatment amounts to torture, these efforts are certainly encouraging and have contributed to a reduction of the number of people held in long-term isolation. But it is worthwhile to examine the extent of these reforms and what solitary confinement now looks like in states that have implemented such changes.

A robust literature exists on the harms of solitary confinement and ideas for reforming or eliminating its use. This paper adds to the literature by evaluating the success of such efforts, several years into this wave, now that there is more data available. It examines two states that have presented themselves as success stories, Massachusetts and Colorado, where the correctional agencies purport to have eliminated long-term solitary confinement. Although its use has been greatly reduced, it persists for some number of incarcerated people—prompting the question of why these agencies are not more forthright about their progress.

This paper uses these two states to illustrate larger trends and concludes by suggesting ways that advocates can ensure that their efforts are maximally successful as the trend of eliminating solitary confinement hopefully continues. It contributes to the scholarship evaluating how our democracy’s branches—judicial, executive, and legislative—can provide meaningful restraints on correctional agencies’ actions in order to protect the people in their custody.

20 Nw. J. L. & Soc. Pol'y. 122 (2024), 37p.