The Washington Post reviews a new book by Yale Law prof James Forman, Jr. entitled
Locking Up Our Own. The book reportedly indicates:
In national surveys conducted over the past 40 years, African Americans have consistently described the criminal justice system as too lenient. Even in the 2000s, after a large and sustained drop in the crime rate and hundreds of thousands of African Americans being imprisoned, almost two-thirds of African Americans maintained that courts were “not harsh enough” with criminals.
While a disproportionate number of African Americans get locked up, an even more disproportionate number of African Americans are
victims of mostly black-on-black crime.
African Americans have grappled with an anguished choice. On the one hand they want to protect themselves from crime, on the other hand they know that the more active and powerful the criminal justice system grows, the more African Americans will be caught up in it, some of whom will be subjected to grossly racist treatment.
Interesting findings in the age of #BlackLivesMatter. Maybe we should view the BLM complaints as coming from a noisy minority of a minority?
