In the United States, more than half a million people are released from jails and prisons each year, joining nearly 20 million Americans who live with a felony record. Reuben Jonathan Miller, a sociologist and a former chaplain at the Cook County Jail in Chicago, spent years waiting alongside incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, their friends, and their families as they tried to put their lives back together. What he learned is an overlooked truth: life after incarceration is its own form of prison. The idea that someone can serve a debt and return as a full-fledged member of society is one of America's most persistent myths. The recently released return to an alternate legal reality that restricts their ability to work, or find housing, or spend time with their families. Informed by Miller's experience as the son and brother of formerly incarcerated men, Halfway Home is a poignant and eye-opening call to arms that exposes how the policies we've enacted prevent people from rebuilding their lives and how mass incarceration has fundamentally changed our democracy. As Miller searchingly explores, America must acknowledge and value the lives of its formerly imprisoned citizens. Book jacket.