The Ferguson Library will welcome Yale legal scholar and former Washington D.C. public defender James Forman, Jr. on Thursday, March 22. Forman is the author of "Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black American." The program will be held at the Main Library and begins at 6:30 p.m. Refreshments will served, and books will be available for purchase and signing.
Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency. Mass incarceration and aggressive police tactics, and their impact on people of color, are feeding outrage and a consensus that something must be done. In "Locking Up Our Own," Forman asks how a majority-black jurisdiction ended up incarcerating so many of its own. Drawing on his experience, Forman writes with compassion about the young men and women he defended and officials struggling to cope with an impossible situation. An original view of our justice system and a moving portrait of the human beings caught up in it.