Summary Of Locking Up Our Own By James Forman

In the excerpt reading from Locking Up Our Own, the author, James Forman Jr., spoke about the issue our society has faced recently with mass incarceration of African-American males. He also talks about his own past experience with the situation through being a public defender. He had previously worked under Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and decided that he wanted to defend low-income individuals who were charged with crimes in Washington, D.C. Forman detailed a few specific cases he had working with young, African-American males and retold his reactions to some of the convictions.
During Forman’s case with “Brandon” he began to notice that the courts convicting so many black males were in fact not white, but black. “It wasn’t

only Brandon and the other men in the cellblock who were black. So was everybody in the courtroom” (Forman, 2017. p 9). He began to question why this was happening. Why were black courts convicting so many of their own race? Forman delved into this deeper by looking into sociological and historical factors of the time. He believe that the black community had adopted the “tough on crime” outlook for a number of reasons.
One reason was that the community had been hit hard by extremely high levels of crime and violence. He believe that the heroin and crack epidemic might have played a factor in such massive rates of homicide across the nation. Another reason was that some people in the black community thought that they were upholding the memory of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. In fact in two cases that Forman depicted, one of the judge’s main reasons for convicting the African-American male was that “Dr. King didn’t march and die so that you could be a fool” (Forman, 2017. p 9).
Later on, the author also spoke on national policies regarding non-violent offenders and marijuana decriminalization. Forman spoke about President Obama’s stance on the issue and that he lead the way for the nonviolent offenders approach. Basically this reduces the mandatory minimum sentencing of offenders who commit nonviolent crimes, specifically those possessing small amounts of marijuana. Obama believed that these people do not owe life sentences and that these long sentences are why America’s prison population is so high.
After that, Forman discussed how he doesn’t agree with the nonviolent offenders approach. In his public defense case of Dante Highsmith, Forman talked about how Dante had held up another African-American man with a knife for a measly $12. The author explained how Dante had been dealt a bad hand since childhood. From having a crack addict mother, to being removed from his mother’s custody, anger issues in school, being held back twice and on the brink of dropping out of high school all only at the age of 16. Dante had found himself in this situation when he was being initiated into his local street gang. Forman persuaded the judge to not send Dante to prison as it had been his first offense and for many other reasons. 15 years later he ran into Dante and Dante had turned his life around. He had gotten his GED, had a job on a construction team and even had a son of his own. This goes to show that given the chance, anyone can turn their life around.
Forman finished with speaking about how our policies need to move away from the nonviolent offenders only approach. He wants everyone to understand that equal protection under the law means equal protection for everyone and that the harshest punishment may not be the right one.