- "An Autobiography of an Ex-Con" (1999)
- "In a Class by Herself" (2000)
- "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" (2010)
- "Teaching While Black: And Other Essays on Race, Gender, and Social Justice" (2019)
Academic articles and reports:
- "Mass Incarceration and the Criminalization of Poverty" (2003)
- "The Prison Industrial Complex: A System of Racial Control" (2005)
- "The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in State Prisons" (2007)
- "The High Cost of Mass Incarceration: A Call to Action" (2012)
- "The New Jim Crow Revisited: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Obama" (2015)
Magazine and newspaper articles:
- "The Problem with Prisons" (The New York Times, 2016)
- "Mass Incarceration is a Public Health Crisis" (HuffPost, 2017)
- "The Criminalization of Blackness: How the Criminal Justice System Targets Black People" (Vox, 2018)
- "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration and the Color of Injustice" (Time, 2020)
- "The End of Mass Incarceration: A Dream Worth Fighting For" (The Atlantic, 2021)
Other works:
- Co-editor of the book "Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex" (2008)
- Producer of the documentary film "The New Jim Crow" (2010)
- Host of the podcast "Truth to Power with Michelle Alexander" (2019)