“James Forman Jr., a former staff attorney at the Public Defender Service of Washington, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.”

The movement for a more humane criminal-justice system has been gaining ground in cities, states and even the federal government. From Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to Suffolk County, Mass., District Attorney Rachael Rollins (D) to D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D), African American activists and elected officials have been at the vanguard. So why is D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) going in the opposite direction and doubling down on the destructive prison-first policies of the past?”