What was going on? How did a majority-black jurisdiction end up incarcerating so many of its own? James Forman Jr Forman worked there as a public defender for six years in the 1990s, at the tail end of its most violent years. The city was known, at various point through the century, as both “Chocolate City” and “America’s murder capital”. Now a professor at Yale Law School, Forman has Washington in his sights. “The words and deeds of … black law enforcement officials and politicians,” Forman writes, “so often overlooked in the histories of the war on drugs, are crucial to explaining why and how the war developed as it did in American cities.” For the most part, such leaders did so with the broad support of constituents seeking safety from the urban crises that colored the second half of the 20th century. Over the past half-century, in moments when black leadership has had the power to direct policy, such leaders have reliably chosen to embrace the types of “tough on crime” tactics that have led the US to becoming the most carceral nation in the world. His book sets up camp, however, on a deeply uncomfortable truth.
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