Miller writes in prose that is at once powerful and engaging — and combines an abundance of data with the lived experiences of the people the numbers represent. A sociologist, criminologist, social worker, and former chaplain at Chicago's Cook County Jail, his insights are partly drawn from having spent 15 years interviewing nearly 250 people caught up in the prison industrial complex. This work included a research project during which he spent three years engaging with 60 men and 30 women after their release from incarceration in Michigan. Miller can also claim far more experiential expertise, because he was 'born black and poor in the age of mass incarceration' and, like every Black person he knows, 'was stopped by the police a number of times.' He is a scientist armed with statistical information, and he is the son and brother of incarcerated men.

Interviewing these men, Miller wears his social scientist’s hat, but he admits to chafing under its constraints. He’s supposed to maintain a scholarly detachment and use terms like 'family complexity' and 'social desirability' as shorthand for what he learns. But part of what makes his book stand out is how he parses his own proximity to the material.

Interweaving personal memoir and qualitative data in narrative form, sociology professor Miller’s Halfway Home is reminiscent of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow (2010) in its exploration of the 'supervised society' and 'carceral citizenship' of mass incarceration that systematically prevent former prisoners from participating in society.

Halfway Home is mainly a book of stories.

... an important, harrowing ethnographic study that reads like a keenly observed memoir, which, in part, it is.

Imprisonment is a nightmare—and it’s only the beginning of the state’s punitive powers.

University of Chicago sociology professor Miller debuts with an intelligent and heartfelt study of how mass incarceration frays familial relationships, harms communities, and sets parolees up for failure.