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.
A Publisher's Weekly Best Books 2017
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A GQ Book of the Year
A Washington Post D.C. Area Bestseller
"This superb, shattering book probably made a deeper impression on
me than any other this year." --Jennifer Senior, New York Times "A
beautiful book, written so well, that gives us the origins and
consequences of where we are . . . I can see why [the Pulitzer
prize] was awarded." --Trevor Noah, The Daily Show "Forman's book
is brave, offering a nuanced examination of how black communities
and their elected representatives wrestled with rising violence and
drug addiction; how they came to embrace a war on drugs and
aggressive policing tactics years before Reagan's war or the advent
of broken windows policing; and how they came to eventually regret
the surveillance, forfeiture, and criminal records they helped
create . . . Forman's book is a compelling example of how to do
local history . . . [A] richly detailed account . . . Incredibly
powerful and well-researched . . . Forman is masterful." --Vesla M.
Weaver, The Boston Review "Superb and shattering . . . 'How did a
majority -black jurisdiction end up incarcerating so many of its
own?' This is the exceptionally delicate question that [Forman]
tries to answer, with exemplary nuance, over the course of his
book. His approach is compassionate . . . The effect, for the
reader, is devastating." --Jennifer Senior, The New York Times
"Timely . . . A masterly account of how a generation of black
elected officials wrestled with recurring crises of violence and
drug use in the nation's capital . . . A big deal and a major
breakthrough . . . Forman's novel claim is this: What most explains
the punitive turn in black America is not a repudiation of civil
rights activism, as some have argued, but an embrace of it . . . "
--Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The New York Times Book Review
"Remarkable . . . Forman's beautifully written narrative, enriched
by firsthand knowledge of the cops and courts, neither condemns
black leaders in hindsight nor exonerates the white-dominated
institutions . . . He adds historical nuance to the story of 'mass
incarceration' told in . . . The New Jim Crow." --Charles Lane, The
Washington Post "Surprising . . . [Forman's] moving, nuanced, and
candid account challenges another aspect of the 'New Jim Crow'
thesis. He shows that some of the most ardent proponents of
tough-on-crime policies in the era that brought us mass
incarceration were black politicians and community leaders--many of
whom were veterans of the civil rights movement . . . The
correctives offered by Forman . . . have consequences not only for
how we understand mass incarceration, but for how we go about
fixing it." --David Cole, The New York Review of Books "An honest
and balanced book . . . Locking Up Our Own doesn't play down the
history of racism in our criminal-justice system, but it does
explain why racial bias doesn't tell the whole story . . . If we
are going to have national 'conversations' about race in the U.S.,
a book like Locking Up Our Own ought to set the tone. If it did,
these debates would be not only more honest but also more civil."
--Jason L. Riley, The Wall Street Journal "Revelatory . . . As
Forman reminds his readers, black people have long been vigilant,
often to no avail, about two kinds of equality enshrined in our
nation's ideals: equal protection of the law, and equal justice
under the law . . . Locking Up Our Own is a well-timed, nuanced
examination of the past . . . [and] makes a powerful case that the
African American community was instrumental in creating a monster.
We should be grateful that the same community . . . is leading the
fight to take the monster down." --Paul Butler, The Atlantic
"Poignant and insightful . . . Forman deftly moves between . . .
examples of black community support for a law-and-order crackdown
and the dire present-day consequences of our increasingly punitive
and aggressive war on crime . . . Timely and important." --Richard
Thompson Ford, San Francisco Chronicle
"Eloquent . . . A gritty, often revelatory work of local history,
interspersed with tales of Forman's experiences as a public
defender . . . Locking Up Our Own is a sobering chronicle of how
black people, in the hope of saving their communities, contributed
to the rise of a system that has undone much of the progress of the
civil rights era. But, as Forman knows, they could not have built
it by themselves, and they are even less likely to be able to
abolish it without influential white allies, and dramatic reforms
in the structure of American society." --Adam Shatz, London Review
of Books
"Tightly argued and compellingly readable . . . Forman is ideally
suited to tell this tale . . . [and] the story he tells is nuanced
. . . Locking Up Our Own is a major contribution to the literature
on mass incarceration." --
Matt Wasserman, The Indypendent "A breakthrough . . . very engaging
and lucidly written." --Andy Martin, The Independent (London)
"[Forman] offers an insightful history of black American leaders
and their struggle to keep their communities safe from police and
criminals alike . . . From both these personal experiences and the
history that helped shape them, Forman uncovers the black
community's role in waging wars on crime and drugs." --Matt Ford,
The Atlantic
"Nuanced and insightful . . . Locking Up Our Own relentlessly
explores the startling paradox that punitive measures today
considered discriminatory were initially supported in the black
community on the grounds of self-protection." --Owen Hamill,
Seattle Book Review
"[Locking Up Our Own] mirrors a Greek tragedy of national
proportions in its notes of dramatic irony . . . But there also
runs a deeper seam in Forman's examination of crime and race in
America, one of great compassion . . . An important book for this
era of reanimated black awareness." --Brandon Tensley, Pacific
Standard
"The big spring book to argue about . . . Forman can catalogue more
dysfunctional systems at close range than The Wire did." --Boris
Kachka, Vulture "A sharp analysis . . . Forman shows how our nation
has gotten to the point where so many citizens--primarily
blacks--are imprisoned . . . 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 questions
. . . Certain to stir debate, this book offers an important new
perspective on the ongoing proliferation of America's 'punishment
binge.'" --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Forman's comprehensive
research and analysis, as well as his compassion and personal
experiences, make Locking Up Our Own a powerfully important and
accessible glimpse at the U.S.'s punitive criminal justice system."
--Jen Forbus, Shelf Awareness
"James Forman Jr. masterfully explores why so many African
Americans supported tough criminal laws over the past fifty years,
and why, more recently, their attitudes began to shift. Combining
dramatic stories from his work as a public defender with original
historical research, Forman uncovers mass incarceration's hidden
history while documenting its human cost. Beautifully written,
powerfully argued, and, most of all, deeply empathetic, Locking Up
Our Own should be read by everybody who cares about race and
justice in America." --Van Jones, author of The Green-Collar
Economy and Rebuild the Dream "An absolutely essential read for
anyone who wants to understand the politics of crime, race, and
incarceration."--Chris Hayes, host of All In with Chris Hayes and
author of A Colony in a Nation "Locking Up Our Own is an engaging,
insightful, and provocative reexamination of over-incarceration in
the black community. James Forman Jr. carefully exposes the
complexities of crime, criminal justice, and race. What he
illuminates should not be ignored." --Bryan Stevenson, author of
Just Mercy and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative "James
Forman Jr.'s frank and necessary history rings with the authentic
voices of black Americans. By paying close attention to local
conditions, he shows how well-meaning reforms snowballed into
steadily harsher criminal justice policies in Washington, D.C. This
is a very valuable and fascinating book--highly readable, engaging,
and resolutely accurate about the urban realities it depicts. I
recognized this world." --Jill Leovy, author of Ghettoside: A True
Story of Murder in America "Forman's compassionate narrative
interweaves the complexities of racial and class dynamics,
especially in how African-American political officials, police
chiefs, judges and prosecutors came to support the punitive
policies that now ravage poor communities of color more than anyone
else . . . [Locking Up Our Own] should become required reading for
students, citizens, activists and policy reformers interested in
excavating how our system of hyper-incarceration was constructed
incrementally over decades." --Alex Mikulich, America
"Locking Up Our Own is a pathbreaking examination of the ways that,
over the past half century, African American policymakers, social
justice activists, jurists, prosecutors, police officials, and
ordinary folk have thought about and grappled with the
administration of criminal justice. It is vivid, accessible, and
full of illuminating insights. It is a brilliant distillation of
deep research, disciplined thoughtfulness, and moral passion. In
ongoing discussions about crime and justice in America,
particularly its racial dimensions, no book will be more essential
than Locking Up Our Own." --Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein
Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and author of For
Discrimination and Race, Crime, and the Law "James Forman Jr. tells
the fascinating story of mass incarceration from the ground up. We
see the heartbreaking stories of young people whose life prospects
are diminished through tough-on-crime policies, the leaders in the
black community whose limited choices led to support for harsh
punishments, and the ways in which the legacy of racism still
frames outcomes in the twenty-first century. Locking Up Our Own
helps us to understand how the prison population exploded and what
we need to do to create a more compassionate approach to crime and
justice." --Marc Mauer, Executive Director of The Sentencing
Project and author of Race to Incarcerate
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