Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
Written by James Forman, Jr.
Narrated by Kevin R. Free
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Editor's Note
Pulitzer Prize winner…
This 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning book in General Nonfiction examines the historical basis and ongoing implications of prejudice in the American criminal justice system. A modern must-read.
James Forman, Jr.
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, D.C., where he cofounded the Maya Angelou Public Charter School. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize—winning Locking Up Our Own and a co-editor of Dismantling Mass Incarceration.
Related to Locking Up Our Own
Related audiobooks
Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Justice System Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOpen Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Colony in a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chokehold: Policing Black Men Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHave Black Lives Ever Mattered? Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration—and How to Achieve Real Reform Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Politics For You
Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 48 Laws of Power Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5While Time Remains: A North Korean Girl's Search for Freedom in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Elon Musk Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Behold a Pale Horse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Small Mercies: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Razorblade Tears: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Out of the Wreckage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Romney: A Reckoning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An American Marriage: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Can't Joke About That: Why Everything Is Funny, Nothing Is Sacred, and We’re All in This Together Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Locking Up Our Own
62 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I was a criminology major in college, later a lawyer. The criminilization of blackness is something I have been studying formally and informally since the early 80s. This book has a different POV than any I have read. I think all rational people can agree that in the US white people have rigged the system to keep those with more melanin down, and that the justice system has been the most efficient and devastating tool in that arsenal. This book though goes a bit farther and looks at the ways African Americans abetted that process. I have seen others indicate this was a response to The New Jim Crow -- I disagree with that descriptor. This book is a "yes and" follow up to The New Jim Crow. A solid piece of scholarship and social commentary . I do think the book could have been better organized, and that the final section should have used much more of the good research out there about recidivism rates for offenders who go to prison versus those given probation and job training. The author left the reader to fill in a lot of blanks. Still an exceptionally worthwhile read to start my 2020.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A very interesting historical perspective on crime and criminalization in America and the overwhelming adverse effects on black communities. This is a topic that could easily be covered in heavily biased way. Though the thesis is clear (and one-sided), I thought the arguments and evidence were handled in a balanced and thorough way. A very good book that lays out some history that we all lived through but were not necessarily exposed to first hand. Eye opening.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a thought provoking book about why there is such a high percentage of Blacks in various penal institutions across our country. What is interesting here is that Forman sees the decisions and impetus for this coming from the black populous - driving this phenomena. A majority favored stricter marijuana laws, mandatory sentences and police stopping drivers for minor infractions to search for guns (Eric Holder) but then arresting them for other crimes. Also, he argues black citizens were against gun laws because they feared white society and home invasions. Justly deserves all its plaudits.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Locking Up Our Own by James Forman Jr. After reading this book and Evicted last year, I'm determined to read more Pulitzer winning non-fiction. This book looks at how our high levels of incarceration got to where they are, specifically in the African American community and how 3-4 decades ago African Americans were often the loudest voice regarding tough on crime and minimum sentences. Forman's main thread through the book is how the complex long-term solutions got left behind (better schools, fighting systemic racism, job training etc) while fighting drugs and violent crime got all the resources both on the local level and national. He puts the decisions in the 70s-90s in historical perspective and shows how the shift has happened over time when communities realized the unforeseen repercussions of their policies.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Focusing on DC, where Forman lived and worked for a number of years, Forman tells a story that applies in many places in the US: the reasons that African-Americans supported, at least initially, harsh-on-crime policies that produced the New Jim Crow, exploding prison populations and ensuring that huge numbers of young African-Americans were involuntarily involved in the criminal justice system. Forman argues: (1) The pioneers who joined and rose in the police were often looking for good jobs, not to transform policing; you wouldn’t expect a rise in black firefighters to change the way fires were fought. (2) Class divisions in the African-American community made it easier for upper- and middle-class blacks to endorse policies that kept poor blacks overpoliced; it’s no accident that the policies they fought the hardest were the ones, like racially motivated traffic stops, that they were likely to experience, while policies that targeted poor neighborhoods got more of a pass. (3) Poor African-Americans were often underpoliced as well; there were huge crime and drug problems in poor communities, and while African-Americans asked for all kinds of resources—including education and economic development along with improved police presence—to fight them, all they got was the police presence. Then policies directed at those neighborhoods, often initially to combat violence, ended up criminalizing a lot of behavior that whites just wouldn’t be caught for, like possession of small amounts of pot. It’s a thought-provoking read.