Many Aspects Of The Legal System In Just Mercy By Bryan Stevenson

In the book, Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson covers many aspects of the legal system, including Stevenson’s quest to create fairness for convicted children. Through Stevenson’s experiences, he sees, first hand, children who are sent to adult prisons. Specifically he saw how the prisoners who were convicted as children revert to a diminishing mental state and often have a great deal of trouble readjusting if they are even remotely capable of doing so. One experience that Bryan Stevenson encountered was with a young fourteen year old named Charlie whose case illustrated the impacts of an adult world in a child’s head. Unlike Charlie, children should never be pushed into adult prisons or receive adult punishments because of their lack of clear understanding

Children are still learning and making mistakes every single day. They are in a transition to adulthood but they are not yet adults. Frequently, in juvenile cases it seems as though the prosecutors want to throw the child into an adult world just because they made one adult mistake. Since children are being forced into the adult world, they can be mistreated simply because a child is defenseless and vulnerable. Charlie illustrated this fact to a great extent when he is too terrified to talk to even Bryan, but eventually Bryan got through to Charlie, “‘There were three men who hurt me on the first night. They touched me and made me do things.’ Tears were streaming down his face. [...] ‘They came back the next night and hurt me a lot’ [...] Then he looked in my face for the first time (123-124). All the other prisoners were taking advantage of him and abusing him, Charlie was clearly terrified and had been through horrors that are worse than anyone’s deepest nightmares. Charlie might now think that every adult place is just like this prison. A child never belongs with adults especially in a place that could be deadly. Bryan heard the cry out for help and hurried to do something about it, “[...] I told them that the child had been sexually abused and raped. They agreed to move him to a nearby juvenile facility within the next several hours” (Stevenson 124). Bryan understood

In this case, Charlie’s action was much more drastic than most, but he was able to keep on track with the support of Bryan Stevenson. Thanks to the help of Bryan Stevenson and the Juvenile System, Charlie was later able to be successful and this would not have been possible if he had been left in the adult prison serving an adult sentence. So this is why, children in the United States should never be tried and convicted as adults because of the potential for abuse and the dangers of not being able to assimilate into society later in