Bill Keller

Bill Keller draws on decades of reporting and newsroom leadership to examine the purpose of incarceration. What’s Prison For? surveys punishment, public safety, education, rehabilitation, and efforts to prepare incarcerated people for life after release. Columbia Global Reports issued it in 2022, presenting an accessible work of journalism grounded in research and visits to correctional programs. Keller was the founding editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project after a long career at The New York Times, where he served as a foreign correspondent and executive editor. His reporting on the Soviet Union earned the 1989 Pulitzer Prize. That background connects the book's policy argument to sustained reporting on institutions and the people who live within them.