Locking Up Our Own
by James Forman Jr. · 2017
Buy on Amazon"An original and consequential argument about race, crime, and the law Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency. Mass incarceration and aggressive police tactics -- and their impact on people of color -- are feeding outrage and a consensus that something must be done. But what if we only know half the story? In Locking Up Our Own, the Yale legal scholar and former public defender James Forman Jr. weighs the tragic role that some African Americans themselves played in escalating the war on crime. As Forman shows, the first substantial cohort of black mayors, judges, and police chiefs took office around the country amid a surge in crime.…
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"Just as Metzl explains how seemingly pro-white policies are killing whites, Forman explores how black communities reckoned with crime."
Ibram X. Kendi's Antiracist Reading List · oprah.com
"James Forman Jr.'s Locking Up Our Own is brilliant and jarring. If everyone in America read it, maybe our country could start to heal."
By the Book: Amy Chua · nytimes.com