James Forman, Jr.
Board Member
James Forman Jr. is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He began his legal career as a staff attorney at Washington D.C.’s Public Defender Service. While there, he co-founded the Maya Angelou Schools, which serve students (including court-involved youth) who haven’t thrived in Washington, D.C.’s traditional high schools. At Yale, Forman teaches criminal law and a seminar called Inside Out: Issues in Criminal Justice, in which Yale students study alongside incarcerated men and women. He is the faculty director of the Yale Center for Law and Racial Justice and the founder of the Access to Law School Program, an innovative law student-led pipeline program creating pathways to law school for first-generation New Haven residents. His first book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. His most recent book is Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change, co-edited with Premal Dharia and Maria Hawilo.
