Examples Of Police Privilege In To Kill A Mockingbird

In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch defends Tom Robinson against all odds, but the racial prejudices at the time caused him to be found guilty and executed. Atticus at one time states, “our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.” This claim can be disproven because some defendants are still treated as second-class citizens compared to those with greater privilege and influence.

Atticus’ statement that everyone is equal to the judicial system is incorrect because those who are privileged have more advantages and can avoid blame for their crimes. Many privileged individuals such as police officers can kill and beat unarmed black men and women based on “reasonable doubt” and are later freed of

The worst punishments these officers receive vary from a demotion to discharge from the force. Zimmerman, a community watch member who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, was never treated as a criminal and although he was charged with murder he was eventually acquitted of all charges. Zimmerman was more recently accused of drunkenly boasting about his crime to strangers in a bar while using racial slurs when referring to Martin. Zimmerman’s privilege as a member of the justice system lead to an unfair sentence that caused Martin’s death to go unavenged. Another more complicated example of police privilege is police assisted suicide. Sandra Bland was pulled over for not correctly using her turn signal when changing lanes and an argument with the officer lead to her arrest. The video of Bland’s arrest has been proven to been edited and cut, causing conspiracies to form around her arrest. Bland was later found hanging in her cell with no report of movement outside her cell, although claims have aroused that the police covered up the real security footage. Close friends and family say she had no history of depression or mental illness which the police used to justify her suicide. Sandra Bland was a large supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, which

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson was up against a powerful family in Maycomb and although Finch provided strong evidence he was found guilty. Robinson’s sentence can be attributed to the racial prejudices in the 1930’s and how the courts were ruled by white men influenced by Maycomb’s expectations. Similar in To Kill a Mockingbird, Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter was cruelly punished because of her society’s views on women. By Hester having sex as a widow and conceiving a child out of wedlock, she defied society’s expectations and was judged on her immoral behavior that contradicted the Christian faith. She refused to give up the name of her lover and was punished twice as hard. Both of these literary examples reject Atticus’ beliefs because the punishments of both Robinson and Prynne were based off of their society’s existing prejudices that were shown in the court’s