In a Whole New Way is a photographic self-portrait by New Yorkers who are serving a term of probation. The book also lifts the veil on this "second-chance" justice intervention that has spread from its origins in 1841 Boston to most of the world today. If all Americans serving a term of probation were gathered in one locale, they would constitute the third-largest city in the country. Yet few of us understand what the sanction involves. Nor do many Americans realize that the originally rehabilitative practice became punitive following the 1972–92 crime wave. In many jurisdictions, it still is. Probation unfortunately has become a staging area for incarceration rather than its alternative.
In a Whole New Way is both the sequel to the editors' Project Lives (2015), the globally acclaimed volume resulting from a similar effort with New Yorkers living in public housing—a work catapulting Seeing for Ourselves to the front tier of "participatory photography" practitioners worldwide—and the source of today's award-winning eponymous documentary film, airing on select public television stations in 2023.