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Summary
Summary
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. Many came to believe that tough measures-such as stringent drug and gun laws and "pretext traffic stops" in poor African American neighborhoods-were needed to secure a stable future for black communities. Some politicians and activists saw criminals as a "cancer" that had to be cut away from the rest of black America. Others supported harsh measures more reluctantly, believing they had no other choice in the face of a public safety emergency.Drawing on his experience as a public defender and focusing on Washington, D.C., Forman writes with compassion for individuals trapped in terrible dilemmas-from the young men and women he defended to officials struggling to cope with an impossible situation. The result is an original view of our justice system as well as a moving portrait of the human beings caught in its coils.
Author Notes
James Forman Jr. is a clinical professor of law at Yale Law School. He has written for The New York Times , The New Republic , numerous law reviews, and other publications. A former clerk for Judge William Norris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court, he spent six years as a public defender in Washington, D.C. He is the cofounder of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School in Washington.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Drawing on a varied CV (public defender, Supreme Court clerk, charter school cofounder, Yale law professor), Forman addresses a tangled and thorny issue-the part played by African-Americans in shaping criminal justice policy. A complex picture emerges, focused on Washington, D.C., as black inner-city residents are hurt both by "over- and under-policing" and as effective enforcement and fairer treatment of minorities come to seem incompatible to policymakers. Forman delineates the ravaging effects of cures with boomerang consequences-from vigorous prosecutions of relatively minor offenses that cut offenders off from public benefits, to black anti-drug activism that enables more punitive policing, to mandatory sentencing policies that prove unequally implemented. With regard to public policy, Forman's attentiveness to class divisions in the black community (for example, the middle-class desire for increased numbers of black policemen, as opposed to the working-class goal of simply accessing new avenues of employment) offers an exemplary perspective. The book achieves genuine immediacy, due not only to the topical subject, but also to Forman's personal experiences within the legal system. Possibly controversial, undoubtedly argumentative, Forman's survey offers a refreshing breath of fresh air on the crisis in American policing. Agent: David McCormick, McCormick Literary. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A sharp analysis of how African-Americans, due to "profound levels of pain, fear, and anger" over crime and violence in their neighborhoods, have helped shape U.S. policies leading to mass incarceration.In this candid, readable account, Forman, a former Washington, D.C., public defender and current professor at Yale Law School, shows how our nation has gotten to the point where so many citizensprimarily blacksare imprisoned. Surveying the recent history of race, crime, and punishment, the author, son of civil rights pioneer James Forman, argues that mass incarceration has developed incrementally as a result of national campaigns and federal actions as well as of "mundane" local decisions made around the nation. With a focus on majority-black D.C., where he represented criminal defendants and co-founded a charter school for school dropouts, Forman traces the rise of drug addiction and criminality, the resulting widespread fear in black neighborhoods, and the demands in the 1980s for "tougher criminal penalties" that set "a national precedent for punitive sentencing." Most people punished under policies to combat drugs and guns, he writes, have been "low-income, poorly educated black men." Especially insightful are Forman's discussions of the rise of black policing in the 1960s ("a surprising number of black officers simply didn't like other black peopleat least not the poor blacks they tended to police"), the "hostile, unforgiving mindset" that prompted "warrior policing" during the 1980s crack epidemic, and the practice of "pretext policing," in which routine traffic stops are used to seek evidence of criminal activity, especially in ghetto areas. Writing with authority and compassion, the author tells many vivid stories of the human toll taken by harsh criminal justice policies. He also asks provocative questionse.g., what if the D.C. drug epidemic had been treated as a public health issue rather than a law enforcement problem? Certain to stir debate, this book offers an important new perspective on the ongoing proliferation of America's "punishment binge." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
SPACEMAN OF BOHEMIA, by Jaroslav Kalfar. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $15.99.) A Czech astronaut is shot into space to investigate a mysterious cloud, and leaves behind a trove of earthly baggage. As our reviewer, Hari Kunzru, put it: "But for all the strangeness of outer space, it is the writing about his home village, the place to which he longs to return and perhaps never can, that beats strongest in this wry, melancholy book." LOCKING UP OUR OWN: Crime and Punishment in Black America, by James Forman Jr. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.) Forman offers a masterly account of how black elected officials grappled with the drug crises and violence of the 1970s. The book, one of the Book Review's 10 best of 2017, argues that prison reform requires a new understanding of justice, one that emphasizes accountability instead of vengeance. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, by Elizabeth Strout. (Random House, $17.) Nine linked stories complement Strout's earlier novel "My Name Is Lucy Barton," and follow a cast of interconnected characters who negotiate their desires and pain, and move past traumas. Our reviewer, Andrea Barrett, praised the book, which she described as "thick with details and even more profound in its rendering of the ways we save, or fail to save, one another." THE GIVERS: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, by David Callahan. (Vintage, $17.) A new crop of billionaires is quietly shaping society through their philanthropic ventures - including school choice, climate change and even marriage rights - with little oversight. Callahan knows the field, and can explain the preferences of tech billionaires versus Wall Street donors, for example. He sheds light on these donors' goals, their choices and how they're different from their forebears. THE KINGDOM, by Emmanuel Carrere. Translated by John Lambert. (Picador, $17.) Carrere takes on the subject of early Christians in the religion's founding days, imagining Paul and Luke after Christ's death. Along the way, he weaves in reflections on his own faith: Driven by despair more than 20 years ago, he became a devout Christian, praying and undertaking a rigorous study of the Bible, until the fervor faded a few years later. HOURGLASS: Time, Memory, Marriage, by Dani Shapiro. (Anchor, $15.) In this midlife appraisal, Shapiro explores the subtle transformations of her life, examining her hopes and exposing the fissures in her marriage, along with her belief that the relationship will prevail. Looking back on the origins of her relationship, Shapiro enters an eloquent dialogue with her earlier, younger selves.
Library Journal Review
Washington, DC, public defender-turned- Yale University clinical law professor Forman traces the growth of the carceral state that now holds behind bars about one in every four adult black males. Taking a different turn from much of the literature on the topic, the author focuses on black-on-black attitudes and actions as he recollects his Washington experience. He argues that beginning in the 1970s, with a rising generation of unprecedented black political power, elected black leaders and their constituents significantly shaped U.S. criminal justice policy, invariably supporting tough on crime measures as fearful black communities sought self-protection. The result in Washington was that a majority black jurisdiction ended up incarcerating many of its own, Forman concludes. VERDICT Forman's series of brief essays deserve reading by policy-makers and practitioners in the criminal justice system, as well as by general readers. His attention to the range of black responses to crime and punishment adds to our understanding of the prison system, while not discounting the enduring role of discrimination. [See Prepub Alert, 10/10/16.]-Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. 3 |
| Part I Origins | |
| 1 Gateway to the War on Drugs: Marijuana, 1975 | p. 17 |
| 2 Black Lives Matter: Gun Control, 1975 | p. 47 |
| 3 Representatives of Their Race: The Rise of African American Police, 1948-78 | p. 78 |
| Part II Consequences | |
| 4 "Locking Up Thugs Is Not Vindictive": Sentencing, 1983-82 | p. 119 |
| 5 "The Worst Thing to Hit Us Since Slavery': Crack and the Advent of Warrior Policing, 1988-92 | p. 151 |
| 6 What Would Martin Luther King, Jr., Say?: Stop and Search, 1995 | p. 185 |
| Epilogue: The Reach of Our Mercy, 2014-16 | p. 217 |
| Notes | p. 241 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 287 |
| Index | p. 291 |