Awards
Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction
From Powells.com
Staff recommendations, guest essays, and curated reading lists.
Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
Long-listed for the National Book Award
One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2017
Shortlisted for the Inaugural Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice
In recent years, America’s criminal justice system has become the subject of an increasingly urgent debate. Critics have assailed the rise of mass incarceration, emphasizing its disproportionate impact on people of color. As James Forman, Jr., points out, however, the war on crime that began in the 1970s was supported by many African American leaders in the nation’s urban centers. In Locking Up Our Own, he seeks to understand why.
Forman shows us that the first substantial cohort of black mayors, judges, and police chiefs took office amid a surge in crime and drug addiction. Many prominent black officials, including Washington, DC, mayor Marion Barry and federal prosecutor Eric Holder, feared that the gains of the civil rights movement were being undermined by lawlessness — and thus embraced tough-on-crime measures, including longer sentences and aggressive police tactics. In the face of skyrocketing murder rates and the proliferation of open-air drug markets, they believed they had no choice. But the policies they adopted would have devastating consequences for residents of poor black neighborhoods.
A former DC public defender, Forman tells riveting stories of politicians, community activists, police officers, defendants, and crime victims. He writes with compassion about individuals trapped in terrible dilemmas — from the men and women he represented in court to officials struggling to respond to a public safety emergency. Locking Up Our Own enriches our understanding of why our society became so punitive and offers important lessons to anyone concerned about the future of race and the criminal justice system in this country.
Review
"This superb, shattering book probably made a deeper impression on me than any other this year." Jennifer Senior, New York Times
Review
"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
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
About the Author
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, DC, where he cofounded the Maya Angelou Public Charter School.