American Stevenson Just Mercy

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption is a story of innocents sentenced to death row (2015). As an attorney at law, he sheds light on the fraudulent Criminal Justice System with the corruption of cops and prison guards, bribed witnesses, and paid off judges. Written in first person, Stevenson’s (2015) account depicts 50 years of debasement of the Criminal Justice System. Telling the accounts of corruption in first person and using dialogue that included the actual victims conversations allowed his readers to be invested in the story. His vocabulary and the stories used, made the reader realize that corruption takes place in the United States Criminal Justice System both in history and continues through today.

“Just mercy” written by Bryan Stevenson is a story about “justice and redemption”(title). Bryan Stevenson tells the story about Walter McMillian a convicted murder. McMillian was unjustly charged for the murder of Ronda Morrison by Ralph Myers even though there was clear evidence that McMillian did not commit this murder. McMillian’s story proves the inequities in the American justice system, and Stevenson proves the faults in the system by telling McMillian’s story. “Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done”(17). When we judge people based on their person not the facts innocent people can be charged for crimes that they never committed, and that is where are justice system is unjust.

Bryan Stevenson, the author of Just Mercy, has many themes in his book. One of which is the importance of human life. He goes through many cases of which, in the end, he realizes that every human deserves empathy and mercy and a fair chance at living their lives. Throughout the novel there is one specific case that changes Stevenson’s perspective the most however. This case is the Walter McMillian case that demonstrates the unfairness that was tolerated for death row inmates. Stevenson expresses this theme throughout the book. Some examples are through the McMillian case, the mental patient case, the juvenile case, and his own experience.

Today, it seems that no matter how many criminals suffer in prison, thousands of crimes are committed each year. Many reformers have noticed this occurrence, and recognize the debatable fallacies of the prison system. Prisons have changed over time to better suit the needs of each generation, and many believe prisons today need to adjust.

For one, it had the ability to shock me out of the presumed complacency I had assumed from the beginning of the essay. I appreciated the chance to have my views changed and my assumptions challenged. This essay challenged me to think about other issues and perspectives of prison, rather than the widespread media ideas about it. Moreover, I appreciated the thoughts and idea Hopkins introduced in his essay. His opinions about prisons and their changes (over a relatively short period of time) are actually incredibly important. If the trend of just “giving up” on prisoners continues, negative effects will be seen throughout our country and society. As Hopkins says, many officials and members of the government want prison to have negative connotations. They want the threat of prison to keep people from committing crimes. However, as Hopkins explains, not only is this plan not working, but it’s also keeping prisoners from having the chance of rehabilitation, parole, and education. The removal if these institutions from the prison system is defining prison as the “last stop”, giving prisoners no chance of release or the ability to change their lives around. There is a litany of problems with this, but the main one is the loss of hope and expectations prisoners receive, and the removal of a second chance. By exploring these issues, Hopkins is confronting concepts and ideals most Americans would rather not think about, and forcing them to challenge their preconceived notions about the prison system, as well as what it means for a person to be sent into

From its early inception as a necessary aspect of modern society to its broken state that can be seen today, the American penal system has changed radically in recent history from an institution that performed the duty of safeguarding the public from those too dangerous to be left unsupervised to a business model concerned more with generating a profit for shareholders. With a 500% increase in inmates that is rivalled by no other country, the United States leads the world in imprisoning a fast-growing portion of its population. It is without a doubt that adverse changes in policy regarding imprisonment along with the formation and privatization of the prison industrial complex contributes substantially to the state of mass incarceration in the United States and will continue to shape its future for the years to come.

The United States prison system perpetuates racial and class prejudice and oppresses offenders through extended sentencing and extending the punishment of felons after their sentencing is done. The purpose of this oppression has become the profit motive of those who invest in prisons in a similar way to how they invest in businesses. To better the American people, a prison system that educates and rehabilitates prisoners is necessary.

Over the past few decades, the United States has witnessed a huge surge in the number of individuals in jail and in prison. Evidence suggests the mass imprisonment policy from the last 40 years was a horrible catastrophe. Putting more people in prison not only ruined lives, it disrupted families, prevented ex-prisoners to find housing, to get an education, or even a good job. Regrettably, the United States has a higher percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is increasing exponentially. The expense produced by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. Although people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. By researching mass incarceration, I hope to get society to understand that incarcerating an individual not only effects the family, but we will look at the long term consequences on society and how the United States can remain safe and, at the same time, undo much of the damage that results from large-scale imprisonment.

Today, the United States has the largest number of people behind bars than any other country in the world. According to Pew Research Center data, that with just five percent of the world population, the United States accounts for twenty-five percent of the prison population. The American penal system exists in theory to protect society from the criminals who committed horrible transgressions; instead, the politicians and judges, both conservatives and liberals who look for votes by feeding fear of crimes to the public to pave ways for their catastrophic policies’ and the justice system to serve as a catalyst for the industrial prison complex multibillion dollar business. The advocate for the prison system argue that it’s necessary to build

When we think of prison, we imagine it’s existence only for the good of our society, its purpose to lock up the “bad guys” and keeps the streets safe and people from harm. But what if, in the recent years, imprisonment has shown different results? While in the past couple of years, the rate of crime has declined, it seems as if the rate of incarceration has only gone up. Well, that’s because it has. Reports show that, “In 1974, 100 out of every 100,000 citizens of this country were in prison; today, there are roughly 700 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 Americans” (Madden 14). Despite these statistics, this rampant imprisonment of people, especially of color, has negatively impacted our society. By discussing the harmful effects of the large rate that men of

Within this paper, you will find a comprehensive review of the United States prison system, and why it needs to analyzed to better support and reform the people of this country. I plan to persuade the other side (politicians and society) into seeing that the way the prison system is now, is not ethical nor economical and it must change. We have one of the world’s largest prison population, but also a very high rate of recidivism. Recidivism is when the prisoners continuously return to prison without being reformed. They return for the same things that they were doing before. So, this leads us to ask what exactly are we doing wrong? When this happens, we as a nation must continuously pay to house and feed these inmates. The purpose of a prison needs to be examined so we can decide if we really are reforming our inmates, or just continuing a vicious cycle. What is the true purpose of prison besides just holding them in a cell? There must be more we can do for these hopeless members of society.

A Public Service Announcement (PSA) pops up on television of a young woman, frail to the bones, staring at you with beaten eyes, devastated by poverty. The next scene of the PSA shows the same women handcuffed and being led through the gates of the local county jail. This scene plays out everyday of prisoners that have come from from difficult, impoverished backgrounds. Bryan Stevenson chronicled the lives of numerous poverty- stricken prisoners during his time as a non- profit lawyer in Montgomery, Alabama. Co-founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson focused on how his organization could help change the unjust and discriminatory justice system. In Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy, poverty affects the lives of those sentenced for criminal activity due to a lack of adequate and available legal, social, and medical resources.

The prisons are unreasonably overcrowded due to mass incarceration in the United States; consequently, it is costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year to sustain this “lock them up and throw away the key” mentality, not to mention the millions of lives, of offenders and the families that are left in the communities, that have been affected in a negative way (Clear 1). The sad thing is that, since the end of 1974, over 34 million human beings have been processed through America’s criminal court system and close to 24 million children have been traumatized by the loss of a parent or even worse, both parents (Drucker 44). The growth rate of prisons, for close to a century (1880-1975), stayed

A question that all criminal justice professionals ask themselves is whether or not our justice system is up to the challenge of doing what it originally set out to do: “protect society from criminals, to punish those who commit crimes, and to make criminals better able to return to society once they have finished their sentences” (Topsfield Foundation, 1996). Although the American system of justice has made great advancements in meeting these goals, one fact that exists is that placing criminals in prison does not benefit everyone.

Together, the reverberations created by the outcries of the last three decades: "Three strikes and you 're out." "Do the crime, and you do time." "Lock 'me up and throw away the key Wycliff, D. (2005). " So, we see that as a society is concerned, we hate criminals, and they deserve punishment. If you are a repeat offender, then they feel you need to be locked up forever. In this writer 's opinion, the prison system is a failure nowadays. Since the 1950’s we no longer use prison as a rehabilitation but just a place where society no longer has to deal with these group of people. Let us look at the next ethical point of view. Let us take a look at another point of ethics.