A bold new look at justice and ethics in America, told through interwoven lives of condemned prisoners and the men and women who come to visit them

In 2018, after nearly a decade's hiatus, the state of Tennessee began executing death row inmates bucking national trends that showed the death penalty in decline. In less than two years, the state put seven men to death, more than any other state but Texas in that time period. It was an execution spree unlike any seen in Tennessee since the 1940s, one only brought to a halt by a global pandemic.   

Award-winning journalist Steven Hale was the leading reporter on these executions, covering it both locally for the Nashville Scene and nationally for The Appeal.

Death Row Welcomes You traces the interwoven lives of condemned prisoners and the men and women who come to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on a near-weekly basis to visit them.

With their Monday night gatherings at the heart of the story, the book traces the paths that brought the characters -- visitors and convicted murderers alike -- to death row. These visitors are, for the most part, not activists -- or at least they did not start out that way. Nor are they the sort of killer-obsessed death row groupies who one occasionally finds in such settings. In fact, in most cases they are average people whose lives, not to mention their views on the death penalty, were turned upside down by a face-to-face meeting with a death row prisoner.

Through his reporting, Hale was introduced to many of the people that make up the community at the center of Death Row Welcomes You. It has afforded him a perspective that no other journalist has been granted, largely because Tennessee's Department of Correction has all but shut off official media access.

Combining topics that have long fascinated readers--crime, death, and life inside prison--Hale writes with humanity, empathy, and insight earned by befriending death row prisoners and standing witnessing to their final moments.