Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
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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Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction 2018 · pulitzer.org
"James Forman Jr. may change the way you think about the mass incarceration of African-Americans on drug charges. Forman is a Yale University law professor who used to be a public defender in Washington, D.C. In his new book, he tells the story of how blacks in law enforcement – people who had battled for the right to serve as police and judges, as well as politicians – made the war on drugs very much their own."
NPR Books We Love — 2017 · apps.npr.org
Publishers Weekly's Best Books — 2017 · publishersweekly.com