The Author (James Forman Jr.)

The author is a professor of law at one of America’s most prestigious academic institutions, Yale Law School, and is also a former public defender in the court system in Washington, D.C. In addition, he is also a co-founder of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School, also in Washington D.C., an institution oriented towards providing at-risk black youth with education-based alternatives to an income and a life defined by criminal activity.

This multi-faceted background gives the author a perspective in writing defined by both academic values (i.e. accuracy, thoroughness, and focus) and lived experience. Those experiences, in turn, have been shaped by his self-identifying, and being externally identified, as black in America, and as someone who has defined his life and career by relationships with, and consideration of, the many facets of the American criminal justice system. His perspective...