Citizen Outlaw

A dramatic narrative account of the life of William Juneboy Outlaw III, whose journey from housing-project youth to ruthless gangland kingpin to change-making community advocate represents a vital next chapter in the ongoing conversation about race and social justice in America When he was in his early twenties, William Juneboy Outlaw III was sentenced to eighty-five years in prison for homicide and armed assault. The sentence brought his brief but prolific criminal career as the head of a forty-member cocaine gang in New Haven, Connecticut, to a close. But behind bars, Outlaw quickly became a feared prison "shot caller" with 150 men under his sway.

Then everything changed: his original sentence was reduced by sixty years. At the same time, he was shipped to a series of the most notorious federal prisons in the country, where he endured long stints in solitary confinement--and where transformational relationships with a fellow inmate and a prison therapist made him realize that he wanted more for himself. Upo