Narrator: In the 1970s, a profound shift occurred in Washington, D.C. For the first time, after a long struggle for self-governance, the city had a Black mayor, a majority-Black city council, and a Black police chief. It was a moment of immense hope, a chance to build a new model of urban governance rooted in the principles of the civil rights movement. Yet, in the decades that followed, this same city leadership would help construct one of the most punitive and expansive criminal justice systems in the country, a system that would end up incarcerating a staggering number of its own Black citizens. How did a generation that fought for freedom end up building a new system of cages?

This tragic paradox is the central question of James Forman Jr.'s groundbreaking book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Forman, a former public defender in D.C., takes readers inside the courtrooms, community meetings, and legislative chambers to reveal the complex and often heartbreaking story of how well-intentioned leaders, desperate to protect their communities from a tidal wave of crime and drugs, made a series of choices that ultimately fueled the engine of mass incarceration.

Narrator: The story of mass incarceration in D.C. begins not with a violent crime, but with a debate over marijuana in 1975. Across the country, a consensus was growing that marijuana use should not be a serious criminal offense. Yet in D.C., arrests for marijuana possession were skyrocketing, and nearly all of those arrested were Black.

A white city council member named David Clarke saw this as a clear civil rights issue. He argued that the aggressive enforcement of marijuana laws was creating a generation of young Black men with criminal records, permanently damaging their futures over a minor offense. He proposed a bill to decriminalize possession, replacing arrests with simple citations. However, his proposal met fierce resistance not from white conservatives, but from some of the city’s most prominent Black leaders.

Councilman Douglas Moore and Superior Court Judge John Fauntleroy, both respected figures in the Black community, argued that decriminalization would be a disaster. They believed that drug use was a crutch that Black people, facing immense systemic oppression, could not afford. In their view, the struggle for liberation required clear minds and disciplined action, and marijuana was a dangerous distraction. As Judge Fauntleroy argued, decriminalizing the drug would "jeopardize the futures of black teenagers." This wasn't a simple "tough on crime" stance; it was a protective, paternalistic argument born from a deep fear that drugs would sabotage the community's fight for equality. In the end, the opposition from Black ministers and community leaders was so strong that the bill was defeated. This decision marked a critical turning point, a moment where D.C.’s new Black leadership chose a path of prohibition and punishment over decriminalization.

Narrator: As the 1970s and 80s progressed, the drug problem escalated from marijuana to heroin and then to the devastating crack cocaine epidemic. With the drugs came a terrifying surge in violence. In 1974, D.C. recorded a record number of killings, with 85% of gun violence victims being Black. The community was living in a state of terror.

This fear is powerfully illustrated by the story of Richard Ware. In 1975, his son, Richard Ware III, was shot and killed during a robbery. Consumed by grief and rage, Ware became a fierce advocate for gun control, demanding that the city council "halt the slaughter in the streets." For him and many others, the abstract right to bear arms meant nothing compared to the daily reality of Black-on-Black violence. Their advocacy led to D.C. passing one of the strictest gun control laws in the nation.

This same fear fueled a powerful movement for harsher sentences. Residents felt trapped by what they called "revolving door justice," where offenders were arrested and quickly released back onto the streets. In response, city council member John Ray and Police Chief Burtell Jefferson launched a campaign for mandatory minimum sentences. They argued that these laws were necessary to get violent offenders off the streets and, crucially, to ensure that Black victims received the same justice as white victims. The campaign was a stunning success. In 1982, D.C. voters, including a majority in every predominantly Black ward, overwhelmingly approved Initiative 9, which enacted mandatory minimums for a range of drug and gun crimes. It was a decision made out of desperation, a community choosing the weapon of the state to protect itself from itself.

Narrator: The passage of mandatory minimums coincided with the arrival of crack cocaine, which unleashed an unprecedented wave of violence and social decay. Black leaders described it as "the worst thing to hit us since slavery." The response from law enforcement was to declare war.

This led to the rise of "warrior policing," an aggressive, militarized approach to law enforcement. In D.C., this took the form of "Operation Clean Sweep," where specialized "jump-out" squads patrolled high-crime neighborhoods, treating residents not as citizens to be protected but as an enemy population to be subdued. The presumption of innocence evaporated. Any young Black man on a corner was a potential suspect.

The devastating impact of this approach is captured in the experience of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School, an institution founded to help court-involved youth turn their lives around. The school’s staff and students found themselves under constant siege by the police. Officers would raid the corner outside the school, throwing students against walls and searching them without cause. At a town hall meeting meant to ease tensions, a police officer suggested the students should wear large ID cards to avoid being harassed. The message was clear: in their own neighborhood, these Black students were presumed guilty until proven otherwise. The very institution trying to offer them a future was being undermined by a police force that saw them only as a threat.

Narrator: Forman shows that the true tragedy of these policies is seen in the individual lives they destroyed. The story of Tasha Willis is a heartbreaking example. In the 1990s, Willis, a heroin addict, was arrested for selling $10 worth of the drug to an undercover officer. Because of a prior conviction, she faced a sentence of up to 60 years in prison.

As her public defender, Forman explained the prosecutor's plea offer: five years in prison. Willis firmly rejected it. "Tell them I don't need to go to jail," she said. "Tell them I need a drug program." She understood what the system refused to see: her crime was a symptom of her addiction. Prison would not cure her. But the system was not designed to offer help; it was designed to deliver punishment. There were few drug treatment slots available, but there were plenty of prison cells. Willis's story illustrates the core failure of the tough-on-crime era: in its relentless focus on punishment, it stripped away the resources for rehabilitation, trapping the most vulnerable people in a cycle of addiction and incarceration.

Narrator: If a series of punitive choices built mass incarceration, the book suggests that a different set of choices can help dismantle it. This is powerfully demonstrated in the story of Dante, a teenager who committed an armed robbery, and his victim, an older man named Mr. Thomas.

As Dante's lawyer, Forman expected Mr. Thomas to demand the harshest possible sentence. Instead, after Forman shared Dante's story of a difficult, unsupervised childhood, Mr. Thomas did something extraordinary. He chose mercy. In court, he told the judge that he supported sending Dante not to prison, but to a church-based carpentry program. The judge, moved by this act of grace, agreed. Years later, Forman ran into Dante, who was working on a construction site, had earned his GED, and was raising a son. He had stayed out of trouble. Mr. Thomas's decision to forgive, and Pastor Gaffney's decision to give a troubled kid a chance, had altered the course of Dante's life. This story serves as the book's ultimate counter-argument, showing that justice does not have to mean vengeance.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Locking Up Our Own is that mass incarceration was not a simple, monolithic policy imposed on Black America by a racist white power structure. It was a complex tragedy built incrementally, with the participation of Black leaders, voters, and police who were making desperate choices in an effort to save their communities from an epidemic of violence. They embraced harsher laws and more aggressive policing as tools of liberation, but these tools ultimately turned against their own people with devastating, multigenerational consequences.

The book leaves us with a profound challenge. If the system we have was built on a foundation of fear, what would it look like to build a new system based on mercy? It forces us to ask what justice truly requires—not just from our institutions, but from each of us. Does it require vengeance, or is there room for the kind of grace that Mr. Thomas showed Dante, a grace that has the power to not only punish a crime, but to restore a life?