We want to hear from anyone who has stood close enough to an execution to know what it smells like.

Researchers who have spent years inside this system. Journalists who have sat in courtrooms and watched justice fail. Lawyers, social workers, chaplains, prison guards — anyone with something to say that they cannot stop needing to say.

We especially want to hear from people with lived experience: those who have been incarcerated, those who have lost someone to violence, those who have lost someone to the state. The voices closest to this system are the ones most often excluded from the books written about it. That is exactly what we are here to change.

We do not require prior publishing experience. We do not require an agent.

We require honesty, rigor, and the willingness to put something true on the page. What makes a Complicit Press book is not a particular style or credential — it is a refusal to look away.