Yale Law School professor James Forman Jr. on Monday won a Pulitzer Prize award for his powerful book tracing the growth of tough-on-crime and mass incarceration policies and their impact on people of color.

The book “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America” draws on Forman’s experience as a public defender in Washington, D.C., a job he took after clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 1993 and 1994.