James Forman Jr. (Photo courtesy University of Richmond School of Law)
Speaking Thursday at the University of Richmond School of Law, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Yale University law professor James Forman Jr. addressed key elements of mass incarceration in America, including how drugs and race are intertwined in criminal justice.
“One of my central arguments of the book is to understand how we got mass incarceration, and how we’re going to abolish it,” said Forman, author of “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.”
Forman said that a part of mass incarceration most people overlook is the public health crisis. Noting that heroin addiction has made a comeback in full force, Forman commented on the way America’s institutions have been handling the problem. Regarding law enforcement especially, he said police are encountering heroin addicts in public spaces with “the only tools at their disposal [being] handcuffs, and the only place they can take you [for treatment] is the local jail.”
“Locking Up Our Own” looks at the disproportionate impact of mass incarceration on people of color, and why African American leaders in U.S. cities — responding to escalating violence and drug addiction — supported the “tough on crime” policies starting in the 1970s that resulted in lengthy prison sentences and aggressive police tactics.
A former public defender in Washington, D.C., Forman went on to offer suggestions for how to combat mass incarceration in the future.
“We feel like sometimes these problems are so massive, and they render us powerless because of their size and their scope and their scale,” he said.
But the impact people can have on a local level is more powerful than they think, Forman added. “This is fundamentally a state and local problem.”
Forman said that 88% of people who are in prison in the United States are in a state, county or local facility, rather than a federal penitentiary.
To make a change in mandatory minimum sentencing requirements, for example, “the most important legislator you all need to be thinking about, or office you want to run for, is your state legislator,” he said.
Forman also mentioned the importance of inclusivity for inmates after they are released back into society. Former prisoners with a conviction on their records are met with a “wall of no’s” by being rejected from jobs, higher education and other opportunities when they try to reintegrate into society, he said.
Forman said what he has personally done for the prison population has been through education. He became involved in an “Inside Out” program at Yale, where students have class at prisons alongside incarcerated people. He also co-founded the Maya Angelou Public Charter School, an alternative school in Washington, D.C., for dropouts and arrested youth.
Forman said he hopes others will help to work for a system that restores, repairs and protects communities.
In a challenge to his student audience, he added, “I know that you will rise up and create a movement that is going to make our system finally just.”
