By Destiny Torres, Staff Writer
The ugly reality of the criminal justice system in the United States is that America makes up 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners, with a disproportionate number of them young males of color. How this country got to this point is what James Forman Jr. has been studying, teaching and writing about for much of his adult life.
Forman, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America,” and also a Yale law professor and public defender for six years, gave a presentation at CSUDH in October as part of the Social Justice Distinguished Speaker Series that simplified this complex issue into three main parts. But each of those parts has contributed greatly to what Forman sees as a highly unequal so-called justice system.
“I started to wonder whether I should call it the criminal justice system or whether it should rather be called the criminal legal system because sometimes it seems like there’s not enough justice in the system for it to deserve that label,” Forman said.
Escalating crime rates and violence in communities in colors starting in the 1960s was the first factor for the growth of America’s prison industrial Forman mentioned. From 1980 to 2019, the number of incarcerated grew from half a million in 1980 to about 2.3 million in 2019, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. But people were sounding warnings of what could come in those early days. Forman said he has read numerous letters written by community members to local governments asking them to address the problems in their neighborhoods.
The government officials who received those letters were the second factor, Forman said. Many were part of the first generation of Black elected officials still riding the wave of change brought by the Civil Rights revolution. But their desire to effect positive changes in their communities was constrained by historical and political factors.
Forman said that because of the long history of discrimination, that generation of Black elected officials come into office with the intention of protecting communities that lacked resources, but they were overreliant on police and prosecutors to provide that protection. When it came time to ask Washington D.C., for money to help fund services in their communities, rather than asking for the long-term educational and housing programs that can help halt a community’s decline, they usually asked for and received money for just law enforcement.
The third factor contributing to our criminal injustice system was the body of small decisions made by those officials that turned out to have far greater repercussions. For instance, Forman said even the seemingly small choice of that government agency to turn to in terms of getting help for addiction problems in a community can tip an area’s already shaky balance into precarious territory.
Though the statistics and facts he conveyed felt devastating at times, Forman’s lecture did convey optimism as well, such as when he empowered the audience to be the change that needs to happen.
”There’s been so much stigma attached to [mass incarceration] that people are afraid to talk about their personal connections to the issue, ” Forman said. ”As long as we have that perspective… then we’re never going to have the belief… to think that collectively we can create change.”
He told the students in the audience that when they enter into positions of power and leadership that they should immerse themselves in conversations with the community they serve. And to never doubt that change can happen by continuing to protest, march and organize the fight against oppression, regardless of the doubts of disbelievers.
“You are the generation that is going to liberate us,” Forman said.
