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Why it matters
It complicates familiar accounts of mass incarceration without excusing structural racism.
A celebrated work
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
James Forman Jr.2018 selection · Nonfiction
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
A legal history examining Black leaders' complicated roles in the rise of punitive criminal policy.
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Read this if…
You want nuanced criminal-justice history.
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Ideas inside
mass incarcerationlawracepublic policy
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Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction — official winner recordOfficial record↗ (opens in a new tab)