James Kilgore is an activist, writer and researcher based in Urbana, Illinois. He currently leads the Challenging E-Carceration campaign which focuses on the use of electronic monitoring in the criminal legal system. The campaign is hosted by the Center for Media Justice and the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center.  James received a 2017 Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship to do this work. He has written widely on mass incarceration and is the author of five books, including Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time and four novels drafted during his six years in prison. He has two sons, aged 24 and 28.