How long does it take to read Locking Up Our Own?
James Forman
Locking Up Our Own by James Forman takes about 5 hours 52 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 52 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2017. 320 pages, about 88,000 words.
12 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 9 hours 47 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 52 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 40 minutes |
The page count is the median across 6 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"An original and consequential argument about race, crime, and the law Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency. Mass incarceration and aggressive police tactics -- and their impact on people of color -- are feeding outrage and a consensus that something must be done. But what if we only know half the story? In Locking Up Our Own, the Yale legal scholar and former public defender James Forman Jr. weighs the tragic role that some African Americans themselves played in escalating the war on crime. As Forman shows, the first substantial cohort of black mayors, judges, and police chiefs took office around the country amid a surge in crime. Many came to believe that tough measures -- such as stringent drug and gun laws and "pretext traffic stops" in poor African American neighborhoods -- were needed to secure a stable future for black communities. Some politicians and activists saw criminals as a "cancer" that had to be cut away from the rest of black America. Others supported harsh measures more reluctantly, believing they had no other choice in the face of a public safety emergency. Drawing on his experience as a public defender and focusing on Washington, D.C., Forman writes with compassion for individuals trapped in terrible dilemmas -- from the young men and women he defended to officials struggling to cope with an impossible situation. The result is an original view of our justice system as well as a moving portrait of the human beings caught in its coils."-- "Recounts the tragic role that some African Americans--as judges, prosecutors, politicians, police officers, and voters--played in escalating the war on crime"--
Subjects: Administration of Criminal justice, Race relations, African American judges, Power over Life and death, Social justice, African American police
