num_pages: 322
description: In recent years Americas 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 nations 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 D.C. mayor Marion Barry and federal prosecutor Eric Holder feared that the gains of the civil rights movement were being undermined by lawlessnessand 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 D.C. 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 dilemmasfrom 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.
language: English
title: Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux