This interview originally aired on Feb. 9, 2018. Since then, the book won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction.
"Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America" is a book that looks at how African American leaders–with the best intentions–made choices that eventually helped create mass incarceration.
James Forman Jr., a law professor at Yale University, is the author of the book. After getting his law degree, he worked as a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. For six years he was a public defender in Washington D.C., where he became frustrated with the lack of education for juveniles. WPSU's Min Xian talked to him about writing about people he disagreed with and making changes in communities.
