Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America

Part 1 of Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America focuses on the Mass Incarceration of Black People, tracing the origins of the problem to criminal justice policies from the 1970s. Forman explains that rampant drug use and gun violence prompted Black and white civic leaders to enact policies that inadvertently fueled the incarceration of Black men and boys. Drawing on a wide range of sources, he argues that mass incarceration did not result from a single decision or policy, but from “components [that] were assembled piecemeal over a forty-year period” (13). Forman stresses the importance of class dynamics in mass incarceration, noting that the practice broadly harms Black people, but that the poor and uneducated are most directly affected. He draws on statistics to support this point: “By the year 2000, the lifetime risk of incarceration for black high school dropouts was ten times higher than it was for African Americans who had attended college” (13). Collectively, these data and observations paint a picture of mass incarceration as a diffuse phenomenon that happened over a prolonged period of time and targeted Black people—and lower-income Black people—specifically.

In Chapter 1, Forman identifies drug policies from the 1970s as steppingstones to mass incarceration. The chapter focuses on The Impact of the War on Drug on Black People, a central theme in Forman’s book. Despite the nationwide move to decriminalize marijuana (a move spurred by a 1972 report by the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse), politicians toughened their stance on all drugs. In DC, the majority-Black city council rejected Clarke’s bill to eliminate prison sentences for marijuana possession and instead called for tougher sentences for drug offenders. The police supported this stance by aggressively pursuing marijuana crimes, concentrating their efforts on poor, Black neighborhoods. Forman cites statistics to convey the extent of racial disparities in policing: “Marijuana arrests had jumped from 334 in 1968 to 3,002 in 1975—a 900 percent increase. Moreover, 80 percent of those arrested were black” (20). As Forman observes, these policies impacted Black people in the long term, since having a marijuana charge on one’s arrest record impacted one’s ability to find housing or a job, among other things. The practice of targeting Black people for marijuana crimes continued without change for decades: “In Washington, DC, the black arrest rate for marijuana possession in 2010 was eight times that for whites, and in that same year, law enforcement in the city made 5,393 marijuana possession arrests—nearly fifteen arrests a day” (18). Forman therefore shows that, despite early initiatives to decriminalize marijuana, the War on Drugs ultimately introduced tough-on-crime measures, leading to racial disparities in the criminal justice system that continue to exist today. Demonstrating these points situates Forman’s analysis as not merely of historical significance: He establishes that the War on Drugs set a precedent that continues to inform the modern-day criminal justice system.

One of Forman’s most important contributions to the study of criminal justice in the US is his emphasis on The Role of Black Leaders in the Development of Tough-on-Crime Policies, a theme he addresses throughout Part 1. Forman argues that the heroin epidemic informed Black leaders’ aggressive stance against marijuana, which was central to their tough-on-crime agenda. Heroin ravaged DC’s underprivileged Black neighborhoods in the 1960s, leading to a rise in overdoses and crime. Studies at the DC Central Detention Facility convey the dramatic increase in heroin use and its impact on incarceration rates:

In the early to mid-1960s, less than 3 percent of new inmates were addicted to heroin, but beginning in 1967 the growth rate exploded, tripling by 1968, then tripling again by February 1969. By June 1969, an astonishing 45 percent of the men admitted to the jail were addicts. In the city itself, the number of addicts rose from 5,000 in early 1970 to 18,000 by Christmas of that year. By 1971, there were about fifteen times more heroin addicts in Washington, D.C., than in all of England (25).

Although many Black leaders called for an “all of the above” approach to curbing drugs, including drug treatment and social programs, the policies they enacted were primarily punitive. As Forman explains, many Black leaders objected to methadone treatment, arguing that it created narcotics dependency.

He cites examples to convey the extent of Black opposition to decriminalization. For instance, the BDC, a DC-based organization of Black nationalists, believed that white people wanted to keep Black people addicted to drugs as a form of social control. Thus, the organization called for punitive action against drug dealers of all races. This stance mirrored that of other Black leaders, such as Moore and Fauntleroy. The former viewed drugs as a symptom and cause of racial oppression, while the latter believed that decriminalizing marijuana would not address other problems associated with the drug, such as school failure and violence. The Black church also objected to decriminalization, viewing marijuana as a gateway drug to more powerful narcotics, such as heroin and LSD. Black pastors held rallies against decriminalization in DC and met with the chair of the city council to voice their opposition to Clarke’s bill. With these examples, Forman persuasively argues that Black leaders actively participated in enacting the tough-on-crime measures that fueled mass incarceration. Forman ascribes Black opposition to decriminalization to the politics of respectability. He also cites Lovinger Bowden, a professor at Howard University, who stressed the numbing effects of drugs and their potential impact on social justice work: “We cannot pull ourselves together if we are on Cloud Nine” (37). By drawing together this information, Forman’s analysis goes to show not only that Black leaders and community members play a role in tough-on-crime policies but also why they did: It was often out of an awareness of the negative impact drugs had on Black communities that these groups supported tough-on-crime measures.

In addition to drugs, Forman argues that gun violence played a central role in Black leaders’ adoption of tough-on-crime policies. He starts Chapter 2 with a story about a home invasion and robbery that made the front page of the Afro. This anecdote not only reinforces the information derived from research studies, but also underscores the impact of gun violence on individuals. As Forman notes, this example of gun violence was not an aberration but a fact borne out by statistics: “Between 1960 and 1969, the District's murder rate tripled, attracting widespread attention from national politicians” (48). This upward trend in gun violence continued for years, with gun violence becoming “the leading cause of death for DC males under the age of forty” in 1974 (50). Forman underscores the broad relevance of his research by drawing parallels between DC’s murder rates and national trends:

As the murder rate spiked [nationally] in the 1960s, so too did the number of homicides involving firearms. In addition, robberies, includ­ing armed robberies, had increased since the early 1960s at a higher rate than any other crime, and by 1973, more and more of those armed robberies involved handguns instead of knives or other less lethal weapons (50-51).

Forman argues that the fear of gun violence fueled Black leaders’ tough-on-crime stance. National polls showing an increased fear of crime in all segments of the American population support his argument. Further, polls with a racial breakdown consistently reveal that Black people were more fearful than white people. Two-thirds of respondents to an Urban League poll, for example, stated that they were “afraid to walk in their own neighborhoods” (53). Similarly, a commission established by the mayor of DC found that 20% of men and 45% of women “never went out alone at night” (53). Forman stresses the importance of class to this discussion: “[Gun crime] wasn’t equally distributed throughout black America. Rather, it was concentrated among the poorest blacks, who were forced into living conditions that generated violence” (63). By doing so, he situates the key claims of his book in intersectional terms and indicates that, while race is a central component of these issues, class also plays an important part that cannot be ignored.

By grounding his arguments in reputable studies and statistical information, Forman effectively cuts through much of the rhetorical back-and-forth about Black crime. For example, widespread fears of police brutality against Black people spurred Black leaders to promote Black policing, another important tough-on-crime policy. As Forman notes, studies reveal that these fears were not unwarranted. A 1966 nationwide survey, for instance, found that predominantly white police officers were rarely punished for abuse allegations (98). Promoting Black policing, however, did not solve racial disparities in police departments. In 1966, researchers at the University of Michigan found that although Black officers were not as prejudiced as white officers, they still expressed anti-Black attitudes (108). The same researchers classified 28% of Black officers as “prejudiced” or “highly prejudiced” (108). These data indicate that Forman’s claims are well grounded in the available research.

In addition to studies, Forman uses parallels and examples to explain and strengthen his arguments. In Chapter 1, for example, he draws parallels between decriminalization efforts in DC and similar movements in other states to convey the nationwide popularity of the decriminalization movement (21). Later in the chapter, he compares the pervasiveness of anticrime rhetoric in DC in the 1970s to that of Detroit, another predominantly Black city struggling with rising crime rates:

At a prayer breakfast celebrating the inauguration of Coleman Young, Detroit’s first black mayor, Judge Damon Keith urged Young to tackle the crime epidemic: ‘Your administration will have to devise a means of ridding this city, root and branch, of the criminals who are commit­ting murders, rapes and assaults on the people of this city' (31).

This quotation speaks to the fact that the anticrime rhetoric in DC was part and parcel as a national trend among Black leaders to adopt a tough-on-crime stance. Forman also draws parallels between DC and Harlem, a New York City neighborhood central to the Black antidrug and anticrime activist movement: “Some of the nation’s most effective black antidrug activists were based in Harlem, New York, where church leaders, community groups, and the local black press demanded a more hard-nosed response to that city’s heroin crisis” (31). Nevertheless, Forman also indicates the existence of differences among the leaders of various cities across the US. In contrast to antidrug leaders in DC, the head of the antidrug coalition in Harlem did not embrace the “all of the above” approach to curbing drugs, arguing instead that policing was the only answer to the country’s drug problem.

Forman uses examples to explain why Black leaders supported Black policing and tough-on-crime policies. In Chapter 3, for instance, he describes the shooting death of Harrison F. Finley, a World War II veteran and father of two who was killed by police while being arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest (94). Police commonly used these charges to justify violence against Black people, leading the Afro to describe them as catch-all charges (94). Forman also uses examples to explain the concept of the politics of respectability. In Chapter 3, he describes a Black police officer’s embarrassment at witnessing Black people using drugs and committing crimes:

I feel it personally. I was coming home in the streetcar the other day—I was in street clothes. Across the aisle a colored man and a white man were sitting together. The colored man was drunk—he was pushing all over the white man, knocking his packages off his lap—just wouldn't stop. Finally, I couldn't stand it any longer. Everybody was watching. I felt it was a reflection on me—know what I mean? (109).

Such anecdotes complement Forman’s use of statistics and other research data to form a clear picture about why Black people supported tough-on-crime measures. This anecdote further illustrates another important component of this topic: It shows that Black support for tough-on-crime measures at times came from a genuine if misguided desire to improve public and individual perceptions about Black people and ultimately validate their worth and dignity.

Forman’s rhetorical style is clear and concise. He seamless integrates academic studies, parallels, examples, and anecdotes to build a persuasive argument about the role of tough-on-crime policies in the mass incarceration of Black people. Forman uses strong language that makes the text more engaging. In Chapter 1, for example, he writes that “heroin began to devour the city's poor black neighborhoods” (25). In Chapter 2, he characterizes Wilson’s gun control proposal as “absurdly ambitious” (56). Similarly, in Chapter 3, he describes the anti-gun control stance of some Black leaders as “outlandish” but rooted in the tradition of Black self-defense and self-determination. Forman’s language paints a clear picture of how he understands the issues of the book while also making the data-heavy book more engaging and accessible.