Analysis Of Just Mercy: A Story Of Justice And Redemption

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. By Bryan Stevenson. Spiegel & Grau, 2015. Pp. 368.
1. Which social problems are treated in this book? Why did they develop?
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption focuses on many social problems, including the miscarriage of justice to the poor, disabled and minorities; along with the poor living conditions in prisons, and the cruel and unusual punishment. The miscarriage of justice developed throughout our country’s history. Dating as far back as the 1800’s when slavery was an extreme issue, blacks and other minorities were considered to be the most likely to commit a crime and were often convicted on the testimony of a white person. Mr. McMillian is a perfect explain in the book as a

Many children were being sentenced to death row or to die in prison for non-homicidal crimes. This developed because the government did not see what the difference between a child and an adult committing the same crime. Before a decade ago the United States did not have a set age for which a child could be trial as an adult. They finally passed a law saying that no child shall either be sentenced to death row or die in prison. Cruel and unusual punishments developed for the minorities because instead of a black man committing a crime and getting lynched, this was the governments way of saying they could make sure they were executed and punished for the crime. Poor living conditions in prisons emerged because judges were inclined to send more people to prison than the space that was provided. Therefore, prisons became over crowed and hard to handle. Living spaces in prisons got smaller and more prisoners has to share their place with someone else. Security at the prisons also fell downhill, as male guards saw the women and young children as prey for rape. Most prisoners were either brutally assaulted and/or rape while in

This non-profit organization was trying to help as many prisoners that were wrongly accused or sentenced to death row when they should not have been due to age or mental status. The workers were not getting paid for their services they worked out of passion to help those wrongly convicted or sentenced. The largest advocacy group in Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption was the Equal Justice Initiative or EJI. EJI was founded by Bryan Stevenson himself after finding a passion for helping those wrongly condemned to death row. It started by just helping fight the cases of those people who were either innocent on death row or who should not have received such a harsh punishment due to mental illness or cruel and unusual punishment for the crime they committed. Have word got around about the free help Mr. Stevenson was offering to those on death row people started to want his help for other reasons; such as life imprisonment convictions. The cases began to overwhelm the staff at the EJI, but they worked everyday to get more convictions overturned and sentences reduced. They also began to work on the prison conditions around the United States and try to get justice for those brutally assaulted or raped in