After clerking, he took a job at the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C., where for six years he represented juveniles and adults in felony and misdemeanor cases.įorman loved being a public defender, but he quickly became frustrated with the lack of education and job training opportunities for his clients. is one of the nation’s leading authorities on race, education, and the criminal justice system, and a tireless advocate for young people who others have written off.įorman attended Yale Law School, and after he graduated, worked as a law clerk for Judge William Norris of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. The result is an original view of our justice system as well as a moving portrait of the human beings caught in its coils. Others supported harsh measures more reluctantly, believing they had no other choice in the face of a public safety emergency.ĭrawing 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. Some politicians and activists saw criminals as a “cancer” that had to be cut away from the rest of black America. 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. As Forman shows, the first substantial cohort of black mayors, judges, and police chiefs took office around the country amid a surge in crime. weighs the tragic role that some African Americans themselves played in escalating the war on crime.

Mass incarceration and aggressive police tactics-and their impact on people of color-are feeding outrage and a consensus that something must be done.īut what if we only know half the story? In Locking Up Our Own, the Yale legal scholar and former public defender James Forman Jr. Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency. An original and consequential argument about race, crime, and the law

Locking up our own by james forman jr