Let me begin with the one thing I want you to take away from this review: You need to read this book. I don’t care who you are, what your background is, whether you live in the USA or whether you are even interested in this topic. You need to read this book. It addresses an issue that is vital to our understanding of what it means to be a human being, and what it looks like when human rights are being systematically denied to a whole sector of the population – and when those human rights abuses are so well hidden that the majority do not even realize they are happening.
Now let me back up. This book is about the criminal-industrial system in the United States. Specifically, it’s about how that system is rigged. The US has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its prisoners. The vast majority of those prisoners are black and latino. 97% of cases are never brought to trial, but are settled by plea deal. Which doesn’t sound bad until you consider that often these deals are agreed to by the accused to avoid the chance of losing a trial – regardless of whether the person is guilty or not. It can take a long time, sometimes a year or more, before a case even makes it to the court, meaning a person who doesn’t have money for bail can be in jail without having been convicted of any crime for over a year before their guilt or innocence is even established. That makes the idea of taking a plea deal (sometimes for time already served) for a crime they didn’t commit pretty appealing. When we consider that a trial before a jury of our peers is an essential human right, the fact that 97% of the people behind bars didn’t get that opportunity is shocking. That’s not even going into what taking a plea deal does for the future life options of a theretofore convicted felon.
This book is a rare example of non-fiction done with perfect balance. Forman provides plenty of factual information and historical context to help uninitiated readers understand how we got here and to see how the past is echoed in the current prison-industrial system. But he also gives personal stories – both of politicians who have worked for and against a better system, and people whose lives have been destroyed by an unfair system that doesn’t care one bit about guilt or innocence. He even assesses how decisions made with the best intentions ended up making things worse. By the end it will make you not only emotionally invested, but better informed, and it won’t feel like a cumbersome process to get there.
I can certainly see why this book won the Pulitzer Prize – it is absolutely an essential book on this vital and timely topic that, I hope, will bring it to a wider audience – particularly to an audience of people who look like me. People whose lives aren’t shaped by prison sentences and fear of police brutality, and who don’t have any way of understanding what it feels like to live under that weight – the weight of a system set against your success.
I learned so much from this book. And it led me to a lot of related media that I have been and plan to continue consuming to further my understanding of a topic that is central not only to our ability to shape a better and more humane system in future, but to really see a fellow human being when we look at another person, regardless of what they look like, where they come from, and the assumptions that are easy to make. We are all defined by our society, for better or for worse, and this book helps us to understand rather than fear those who are different from us, who might even bear animosity towards us for good reason. I don’t claim to have any answers. I don’t know how to change things this big. But I do think that doing my best to learn about experiences I will never have and to understand even a small part of what it must be like to live in a different place and skin colour is the most important first step I can take. Please, read this book.
Some further reading on this or related topics:
The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander
Soul On Ice – Eldridge Cleaver
Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson – George L. Jackson
Assata: An Autobiography – Assata Shakur
The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Malcolm X
An Autobiography and Are Prisons Obselete – Angela Y. Davis
Just Mercy – Bryan Stevenson
Another Day In the Death of America – Gary Younge
All Involved – Ryan Gattis
Policing Black Lives – Robyn Maynard
The Hate U Give and On the Come Up – Angie Thomas
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge
On Netflix:
13th and 13th: A Conversation with Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay
Black Panthers
Survivors Guide to Prison
This is just a drop in the bucket. I have over a dozen other titles on my shelves, not to mention my Goodreads TBR, on and related to this topic. Pick a spot, dive in, and you will find there is so much more to read, watch and learn.
Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
Long-listed for the National Book Award
Finalist, Current Interest Category, Los Angeles Times Book Prizes
One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2017
Short-listed for the Inaugural Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice
Former public defender James Forman, Jr. is a leading critic of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on people of color. In Locking Up Our Own, he seeks to understand the war on crime that began in the 1970s and why it was supported by many African American leaders in the nation’s urban centers.
Forman shows us that the first substantial cohort of black mayors, judges, and police chiefs took office amid a surge in crime and drug addiction. Many prominent black officials, including Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry and federal prosecutor Eric Holder, feared that the gains of the civil rights movement were being undermined by lawlessness–and thus embraced tough-on-crime measures, including longer sentences and aggressive police tactics. In the face of skyrocketing murder rates and the proliferation of open-air drug markets, they believed they had no choice. But the policies they adopted would have devastating consequences for residents of poor black neighborhoods.
A former D.C. public defender, Forman tells riveting stories of politicians, community activists, police officers, defendants, and crime victims. He writes with compassion about individuals trapped in terrible dilemmas–from the men and women he represented in court to officials struggling to respond to a public safety emergency. Locking Up Our Own enriches our understanding of why our society became so punitive and offers important lessons to anyone concerned about the future of race and the criminal justice system in this country. – Goodreads
Book Title: Locking Up Our Own
Author: James Forman, Jr.
Series: No
Edition: Paperback
Published By: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Released: February 6, 2018 (First released April 18, 2017)
Genre: Non-Fiction, Race, US Criminal System
Pages: 320
Date Read: February 20-24, 2019
Rating: 10/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.38/5 (1,634 ratings)