James Forman Jr., a former Washington, D.C., public defender, Yale University professor, and author of the Pulitzer Prize winner and The New York Times’ best-seller Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, joins Michele and Igor to discuss one of the unexpected enablers of mass incarceration: black residents in cities across America who overwhelmingly supported tough-on-crime policies throughout the 1960s and 1970s, resulting in disproportionate numbers of black men being put in prison. Forman points fingers at every level of the criminal justice system, as well as President Barack Obama, for failing to address the problem of mass incarceration.
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Michele Jawando is a vice president at the Center for American Progress. Igor Volsky is a vice president at the Center. Sally Tucker is the radio coordinator for Communications at the Center. Rachel Rosen is the senior director of Broadcast Communications at the Center.