A review by audaciaray
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr.

4.0

This is not a book of theory or solutions, it is a really solid history that focuses on DC and spans about 70 years of policing and incarceration policy and practice. Forman is an engaging writer and as a black man who is former defense attorney who now works in a school that is designed to interrupt the school to prison pipeline, he knows what he's talking about. The chapter about "The MLK Speech" black judges give to black folks coming through court is particularly great. There are also great sections on the media and community hype around "black on black crime" and the advocacy processes for increasing the number of black folks working as police and the ways that black folks in DC led the charge to establish mandatory minimums. He doesn't get too heavy handed about what those policies have yielded in recent years, but rather creates a historical context to better understand WTF is happening. This book is best read in conversation with lots of contemporary analysis that black writers are doing on mass incarceration and anti-blackness in policing. Locking Up Our Own is an important piece of that puzzle.