William Eric Waters—also published as William E. Waters, Eric Waters, and Easy Waters—writes at the intersection of criminal justice, race, punishment, lived expertise, participatory research, advocacy, African American literature, and cultural criticism. His scholarship and essays connect formal research with decades of professional practice, firsthand knowledge of criminal legal institutions, teaching, and literary work. This page is a curated guide to selected scholarship and essays rather than an exhaustive bibliography.
Published Scholarship & Research
“Incorporating ‘Lived Expertise’ into Research” — Raul Armenta, Kyla Wasserman, Eric Waters, and Yolanda Johnson-Peterkin. MDRC, May 2025. This Issue Focus examines how researchers can meaningfully incorporate the knowledge of people whose lives are directly affected by the policies and systems under study.
“How Much Punishment Is Enough? Designing Participatory Research on Parole Policies for Persons Convicted of Violent Crimes” — peer-reviewed article in Journal of Social Issues, 69(4), 2013, pp. 771–796. William E. Waters is among the coauthors. The article documents participatory research on parole policy and the experiences of people convicted of violent crimes.
“The ‘Hits’ Keep Coming: Examining Parole Practices for Violent Offenders in New York State” — published conference abstract in International Journal of Psychology, 43(3–4), 2008, p. 256. This work belongs to the earlier phase of Waters’s research on parole practices and punishment.
Together, these publications trace a continuing intellectual trajectory: from examining parole practices, to designing participatory research with directly affected people, to articulating lived expertise as a necessary component of rigorous contemporary research.
Participatory Research, Parole & Advocacy
Waters’s writing on parole and advocacy combines research, organizing history, policy analysis, and lived expertise. The following essays and series provide an extended record of that work.
- Research as Resistance: Building Knowledge Together in the Fight for Parole Justice — connects early participatory parole research, peer-reviewed scholarship, and contemporary lived-expertise frameworks.
- Participatory Research: A How-To Blueprint — a practical guide to co-designing, conducting, and using participatory research in criminal legal system advocacy.
- The Anatomy of Advocacy – In High Heels — an earlier essay that helps contextualize the later expanded Anatomy of Advocacy series.
- The Anatomy of Advocacy: Transforming Criminal “Justice” in New York — the gateway to a four-part series examining a reform campaign led by formerly incarcerated people.
- The Anatomy of Advocacy, Part 1: How “Tough on Crime” Politics Reshaped Justice in New York
- The Anatomy of Advocacy, Part 2: Birth of the Ad Hoc Committee on Lifetime Parole
- The Anatomy of Advocacy, Part 3: Strategy in Action – How They Won the Fight
- The Anatomy of Advocacy, Part 4: Lessons Learned from a Winning Campaign
- Strategies for Effective Advocacy in Criminal Justice Reform — brings the advocacy series and related research material together.
- Waiting for Parole — Between Hope and Despair — reflects on the human consequences of parole decision-making.
- A New Paradigm — Elevating the Voice of Formerly Incarcerated People — examines the importance of positioning directly impacted people as informed and empowered reform partners.
Race, Punishment & the Criminal Legal System
A recurring argument across Waters’s essays is that American punishment cannot be understood apart from race, history, political language, institutional power, and the long development of systems of social control.
- The Three Pillars of American Society: Slavery, Segregation, and Hyperincarceration
- The “new” Jim Crow is as old as the Union
- A Red Record — part of Waters’s continuing examination of crime, punishment, race, and historical memory.
- Eddie Ellis and Criminal Justice Language — on language, stigma, and the legacy of Eddie Ellis.
- Words Matter: Another Look at the Question of Language — considers how terminology shapes perceptions, policy, and possibilities.
- The Justice Imperative — The Key to Criminal Justice Reform — considers hyperincarceration and the broader American criminal legal system.
- United States Supreme Court Upholds Death Penalty Despite “Inevitable” Racial Bias — an examination of McCleskey v. Kemp and racial disparity in capital punishment.
- Reentry is about relationships — an early reflection on what successful return from incarceration requires.
Literature, Race & Cultural Criticism
Literature is another major strand of Waters’s intellectual work. These essays move between literary criticism, African American literature, Black history, aesthetics, crime and punishment, and the relationship between imaginative writing and social institutions.
- The Black Blood of Poetry: Towards a Poetics of Darkened Substance — develops the concept of “dark substance poetics” and places The Black Blood of Poetry within a broader literary lineage.
- Exploring the Legacy of Anti-Blackness in Poetry — an artist statement and reflection on the intellectual framework of The Black Blood of Poetry.
- Advancing Alice Walker — and Her Nonfiction — literary criticism centered on Walker’s nonfiction.
- Happy Valentine’s Day to African American Literature! — reflects on teaching and engagement with the African American literary tradition.
- Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature — The Series — a sustained inquiry into how literature, personal experience, crime, punishment, truth, and justice intersect.
Prison Writing & Anthology Contributions
Waters’s published record also includes contributions to edited volumes on prison writing and corrections. These are contributions to anthologies and edited books rather than books authored by Waters.
- “Chronicling Sing Sing Prison”, by Easy Waters, in Doing Time: Twenty-five Years of Prison Writing, edited by Bell Gale Chevigny. The contribution appears in the “Work” section and begins on page 73.
- “Upon Completing Twenty Years”, by Easy Waters, in Undoing Time: American Prisoners in Their Own Words, edited by Jeff Evans. The contribution begins on page 146.
- “You Don’t Look Like a Criminal!”, by Easy Waters, in Chapter 5, “Inside Prisons,” of Taryn VanderPyl’s Corrections 360: A Look at Corrections from All Angles.
Research and Writing as a Continuum
Across these publications and essays, research, lived expertise, professional practice, literary criticism, and creative writing are not separate enterprises. They form a continuum. Questions about punishment lead to questions about history and race; questions about policy lead to questions about whose knowledge counts; questions about language lead to questions about dignity and institutional power; and literature provides another method for examining justice, memory, accountability, and human possibility.
This relationship among scholarship, practice, and literature is central to Waters’s body of work: knowledge is strengthened when formal research is placed in conversation with the people who have lived the systems being studied, and writing—whether scholarly, critical, or creative—can make those systems more visible and more accountable.
Related sections: Learn more about William Eric Waters and explore his Books.
William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters 