Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America

Content Warning: The section of the guide addresses racism and racial inequities in the US criminal justice system.

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America opens with a 1995 court case. Forman, then an early-career defense attorney in Washington, DC, defended Bandon, a 15-year-old Black boy charged with possession of a firearm and marijuana. Following what Forman and other lawyers dubbed the Martin Luther King speech, which urged defendants to reconsider their ways, the presiding judge sentenced Brandon to six months in juvenile detention. This anecdote serves as a point of departure for a broader discussion of racial inequity in the US criminal justice system. Citing studies and statistics, Forman argues that the punitive policies introduced in the 1970s disproportionately impacted Black communities and that Black people broadly supported these policies. Plagued by violence, heroine, and crack, Black people lobbied their representatives to curb crime. To protect their constituents, some Black officials pushed for harsher penalties, such as mandatory minimum sentencing, while others sought to address the root problems of poverty and discrimination. Forman documents these varied responses, repudiating the claim made by defenders of the criminal justice system that Black leaders ignore Black criminality.