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    Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
    Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
    Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
    Audiobook8 hours

    Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America

    Written by James Forman, Jr.

    Narrated by Kevin R. Free

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    n 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. 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.

    Editor's Note

    Pulitzer Prize winner…

    This 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning book in General Nonfiction examines the historical basis and ongoing implications of prejudice in the American criminal justice system. A modern must-read.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 18, 2017
    ISBN9781501946554
    Author

    James Forman, Jr.

    James Forman, Jr. is a professor of law at Yale Law School. He has written for the New York Times, The Atlantic, numerous law reviews, and other publications. A former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, he spent six years as a public defender in Washington, D.C., where he cofounded the Maya Angelou Public Charter School. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize—winning Locking Up Our Own and a co-editor of Dismantling Mass Incarceration.

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    Reviews for Locking Up Our Own

    4.5/5

    62 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I was a criminology major in college, later a lawyer. The criminilization of blackness is something I have been studying formally and informally since the early 80s. This book has a different POV than any I have read. I think all rational people can agree that in the US white people have rigged the system to keep those with more melanin down, and that the justice system has been the most efficient and devastating tool in that arsenal. This book though goes a bit farther and looks at the ways African Americans abetted that process. I have seen others indicate this was a response to The New Jim Crow -- I disagree with that descriptor. This book is a "yes and" follow up to The New Jim Crow. A solid piece of scholarship and social commentary . I do think the book could have been better organized, and that the final section should have used much more of the good research out there about recidivism rates for offenders who go to prison versus those given probation and job training. The author left the reader to fill in a lot of blanks. Still an exceptionally worthwhile read to start my 2020.
    • 4/5
      A very interesting historical perspective on crime and criminalization in America and the overwhelming adverse effects on black communities. This is a topic that could easily be covered in heavily biased way. Though the thesis is clear (and one-sided), I thought the arguments and evidence were handled in a balanced and thorough way. A very good book that lays out some history that we all lived through but were not necessarily exposed to first hand. Eye opening.
    • 5/5
      This is a thought provoking book about why there is such a high percentage of Blacks in various penal institutions across our country. What is interesting here is that Forman sees the decisions and impetus for this coming from the black populous - driving this phenomena. A majority favored stricter marijuana laws, mandatory sentences and police stopping drivers for minor infractions to search for guns (Eric Holder) but then arresting them for other crimes. Also, he argues black citizens were against gun laws because they feared white society and home invasions. Justly deserves all its plaudits.
    • 5/5
      Locking Up Our Own by James Forman Jr. After reading this book and Evicted last year, I'm determined to read more Pulitzer winning non-fiction. This book looks at how our high levels of incarceration got to where they are, specifically in the African American community and how 3-4 decades ago African Americans were often the loudest voice regarding tough on crime and minimum sentences. Forman's main thread through the book is how the complex long-term solutions got left behind (better schools, fighting systemic racism, job training etc) while fighting drugs and violent crime got all the resources both on the local level and national. He puts the decisions in the 70s-90s in historical perspective and shows how the shift has happened over time when communities realized the unforeseen repercussions of their policies.
    • 5/5
      Focusing on DC, where Forman lived and worked for a number of years, Forman tells a story that applies in many places in the US: the reasons that African-Americans supported, at least initially, harsh-on-crime policies that produced the New Jim Crow, exploding prison populations and ensuring that huge numbers of young African-Americans were involuntarily involved in the criminal justice system. Forman argues: (1) The pioneers who joined and rose in the police were often looking for good jobs, not to transform policing; you wouldn’t expect a rise in black firefighters to change the way fires were fought. (2) Class divisions in the African-American community made it easier for upper- and middle-class blacks to endorse policies that kept poor blacks overpoliced; it’s no accident that the policies they fought the hardest were the ones, like racially motivated traffic stops, that they were likely to experience, while policies that targeted poor neighborhoods got more of a pass. (3) Poor African-Americans were often underpoliced as well; there were huge crime and drug problems in poor communities, and while African-Americans asked for all kinds of resources—including education and economic development along with improved police presence—to fight them, all they got was the police presence. Then policies directed at those neighborhoods, often initially to combat violence, ended up criminalizing a lot of behavior that whites just wouldn’t be caught for, like possession of small amounts of pot. It’s a thought-provoking read.