Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America

The Epilogue focuses on the recent move away from punitive justice. In 2013 and 2014, under the leadership of councilman Tommy Wells, the DC city council passed a proposal to decriminalize marijuana. In contrast to the 1970s, when crime rates were rapidly increasing, the US in 2014 was well into what criminologists call “the great American crime decline” (218). Although shootings remain common in poor, Black neighborhoods, violent crime is down nationwide. The cause of the drop is unclear. Some credit tough-on-crime measures, while others point to an aging population and the end of the crack epidemic. Whatever the case, the decline prompted officials across the country to adopt less punitive approaches to crime.

Barack Obama supported criminal justice reform during his two terms as US President. Obama recognized the role marijuana played in The Mass incarceration of Black People and advocated for less severe punishments for nonviolent drug offenders. His approach to reform was typical of elected officials at that time, including Black officials. For Forman, however, this approach doesn’t go far enough. Forman describes the case of Dante Highsmith, a juvenile offender charged with armed robbery for robbing a man of $12 with a knife in his pocket.