Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America

James Forman Jr. (b. 1967) is an American lawyer, legal scholar, and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Forman’s educational background and professional experiences inform his writing on mass incarceration and the criminal justice system. Forman received his bachelor of arts from Brown University in 1988 and his juris doctor from Yale Law School in 1992. After completing his studies, he worked as a law clerk at the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals and the US Supreme Court. While clerking at the US Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor encouraged Forman to pursue a career with the NAACP or the Department of Justice. Instead, Forman joined the Public Defender Service in Washington, DC, a job he described as “the civil rights work of [his] generation” (“‘Locking Up Our Own’ Details the Mass Incarceration of Black Men.” NPR, 2017). Forman worked as a public defender for six years, representing adults and juveniles charged with a wide range of crimes, including drug and gun offenses. (Some of these cases serve as anecdotes in Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.) Forman grew frustrated with his clients’ lack of employment and educational opportunities. Thus, in 1997, he cofounded the Maya Angelou School, a DC-based organization for troubled youths. Since its foundation, the school has expanded to multiple DC-area youth and adult prisons. The school’s leadership team “dreams of a world in which no person is behind bars; in the meantime, they believe that everyone—including those incarcerated—deserve a high-quality education” (“James Forman Jr.” Yale Law School).

Forman has spent his career helping underprivileged and underrepresented Americans. In addition to working as a public defender and cofounding the Maya Angelou School, he spearheaded a law-student pipeline program matching Yale Law students with first-generation New Haveners interested in pursuing law degrees. Since 2020, the program has helped 18 participants get into law school at the University of Connecticut, Yale, Berkeley, and American University, among other places. Forman is widely recognized as a leader in his field. He has received honorary degrees from Niagara University and Macalester College. In addition, he is a member of the American Law Institute and a Trustee of the Council on Criminal Justice. In 2023, Forman was elected to the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, Forman’s first book, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2018. The book was one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 best books. It was also long listed for the National Book Award and was a finalist in the Current Interest Category of the Los Angeles Times book prizes. Forman’s second book, Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change (Macmillan, 2024), builds on Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by providing strategies for undoing the damage caused by mass incarceration. Co-edited with Premal Dharia and Mario Hawilo, the book features essays by experts, social justice advocates, and formerly incarcerated people.