Prisoners After War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration
Oral History Association, 2025 Best Book Prize Winner
National Council on Public History 2026 Book Award, Honorable Mention
Veterans Studies Association, 2026 Distinguished Book Award Finalist
Albert L. Sturm Award for Excellence in Research, Phi Beta Kappa, Mu Chapter of Virginia 2026 Winner
The United States has both the largest, most expensive, and most powerful military and the largest, most expensive, and most punitive carceral system in the history of the world. Since the American War in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of veterans have been incarcerated after their military service.
Identifying the previously unrecognized connections between American wars and mass incarceration, Prisoners after War reaches across lines of race, class, and gender to record the untold history of incarcerated veterans over the past six decades. Having conducted dozens of oral history interviews, Jason A. Higgins traces the lifelong effects of war, inequality, disability, and mental illness, and explores why hundreds of thousands of veterans, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, were caught up in the carceral system. This original study tells an intergenerational history of state-sanctioned violence, punishment, and inequality, but its pages also resonate with stories of survival and redemption, revealing future possibilities for reform and reparative justice.
Prisoners After War is published by the University of Massachusetts Press as part of its “Veterans” series.
“Prisoners after War is on the cutting edge. It will appeal to a wide array of readers, including scholars of carceral and military history, social scientists interested in the intersections of veterans’ service and reentry, and crucially, general audiences curious about the lived experiences of criminalization and incarceration.”
—Melanie D. Newport, author of This is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise and Mass Incarceration
“Heartbreaking and inspiring, Prisoners after War details the stories of ordinary Americans ensnared in the far-reaching, interwoven tentacles of war, militarization, and domestic policies. An essential, groundbreaking work that adroitly links the experiences and memories of veterans, trauma, disability, and discrimination with the explosion of the carceral state.”
—Kara Dixon Vuic, author of The Girls Next Door: Bringing the Home Front to the Front Lines
“A pathbreaking study of veterans from the Vietnam War to the present that examines the deep connections between war-related trauma, mass incarceration, the ‘war on drugs,’ and grassroots struggles for reparative justice. With this work, at once painful and hopeful, Jason A. Higgins joins a select group of authors who help us understand the history of US militarism and its troubling consequences.”
—Christian G. Appy, author of American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity
“Higgins builds his book around personal stories he collected for the Incarcerated Veterans Oral History Project. He interviewed scores of veterans still imprisoned and out of jail, police officers and judges, and fellow vets who have become VTC volunteers and helpers. One common theme among those who end up in legal trouble is the feeling of being betrayed and abandoned.”—Jacobin
“Prisoners after War is an important book illuminating some dark corners of American history. It is not an entertaining book, but one that exposes many outrageous and significant truths about America’s mistreatment of its veterans. The writing is clear and convincing, the subject is troubling, the author’s findings are well documented, and the book is highly recommended.”—John Ketwig, The Veteran
“Through his painstaking labor and devotion, Higgins has brought the systematic mistreatment of veterans into stark focus and eviscerated the usual suspects along the way. I recommend Prisoners after War as a text for classes on veterans, war, or criminal justice.”—Anthony James Albright, Journal of Veterans Studies
“This book gives the reader a sobering look at the large—some 100,000—veteran prison population and at some of the reasons for it. Strongly recommended.”—Tom Werzyn, The VVA Veteran
Service Denied: Marginalized Veterans in Modern American History, co-edited by John M. Kinder and Jason A. Higgins
“Chronicling the untold stories of marginalized veterans in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Service Denied uncovers the generational divides, cultural stigmas, and discriminatory policies that affected veterans during and after their military service. Together, the chapters in this collection recast veterans beyond the archetype, inspiring an innovative model for veterans studies that encourages an intersectional and interdisciplinary analysis of veterans history.”
This volume offers a bird’s eye view of major questions and issues in veterans studies, and a valuable intervention: those who study and write about former service mers, the authors presciently declare, must consider how ‘intersectional systems of oppression’ shape experiences in and beyond the military.”
—Jessica L. Adler, author of Burdens of War: Creating the United States Veterans Health System
“Using cutting-edge scholarship, this collection presents new insights on historically marginalized groups. Service Denied makes invaluable contributions to the fields of military history, African American history, Latinx history, women’s history, and queer history.”
“This oral history project with incarcerated veterans . . . [is] an incredibly exciting example of activist scholarship that lies at the nexus of two fields that rarely intersect: military history and the history of mass incarceration.”
—Steve Estes, author of Ask and Tell: Gay and Lesbian Veterans Speak Out
“Service Denied is a dynamic contribution to the growing literature on the veteran experience, highlighting with clarity the categorization and acknowledgement (or exclusion) of veterans based on (dis)ability, economic, social, racial, sexual, and political demographics.” — Reviewed Heather M. Haley, History of War
Available for book talks, media, consultations: jasonhiggins@vt.edu
