The Complicated Role Of Black Leaders In Shaping The Criminal Justice System

The Complicated Role Of Black Leaders In Shaping The Criminal Justice System Enlarge this image Farrar, Straus and Giroux Farrar, Straus and Giroux On this week's episode of Code Switch, we dove into Kamala Harris's past as a prosecutor, both as the district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California. So we talked to James Forman Jr., a professor at Yale Law School and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, to help us understand the complicated interplay between Black leaders and the criminal justice system, which has disproportionately targeted and incarcerated Black folks.Only part of what he told us made it into the final cut of the episode, so here's an extended cut of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity. Can you tell us about your client Brandon, and how his sentencing changed the way you thought about the role Black people played in the giant apparatus of criminal punishment? Sponsor Message But what I think is really crucial to understand is that, when Black people went to community meetings and said "We want more police," it wasn't the only thing they were asking for. Sponsor Message One of the reasons why people find the story of Brandon somewhat surprising is that there's an assumption that we make: Well, everybody in the courtroom was Black.