Yesterday, James Forman, Jr. was a guest on WYPR’s On the Record with Sheilah Kast to talk about his new book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America and to promote OSI’s Talking About Race event on Monday, where he’ll talk about the book witjh University of Baltimore Law School Dean Ron Weich, U.S. Court of Appeals Senior Judge and OSI-Baltimore Advisory Board Member Andre M. Davis and University of Baltimore Law School Professor Odeana Neal. Register here.
Forman, a Yale legal scholar, describes how African American mayors, judges and police officers contributed to the mass incarceration of members of their own communities. While African American law enforcement had the “best of intentions,” Forman says, ultimately their limited choices due to the institutionalized racism they faced had a devastating effect on poor black neighborhoods.
