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Poverty And The Justice System In Just Mercy By Bryan Stevenson

832 Words4 Pages

Poverty and The Justice System An author by the name of Bryan Stevenson wrote the book Just Mercy. Throughout the book he discussed various points about the United States justice system and the wrongfully convicted crimes that occurred. The stories that the author told indicated that “ The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice”(18). Wealth is an abundance of valuable possessions or money. Poverty is the state of being extremely poor. Poverty affects the justice system because it divides the people of society into different social classes. People in poverty receive the most harmful sentences from our justice system. The people in charge of the justice system think less of a person because they do not have much. …show more content…

When a person of poverty is arrested, they more than likely do not have a lawyer so they have one appointed to them. As stated in the book, “Joe’s appointed appellate counsel filed an Ander’s brief- indicating his belief that there were no legitimate grounds for appeal and no credible basis to complain about the conviction or sentence- and was permitted to withdraw from representing Joe”(Stevenson 259). Joe was one who did not have the same equal opportunities as the wealthy people, therefore his appointed lawyer was withdrawn from representing him which is not fair. The judge sentenced him anyway. There was no sympathy from the justice system. Every defendant has the right to legal representation but they can choose when they want to stop representing a …show more content…

He tried his best to eliminate integration and racial discrimination in any shape or form, but since the United States is so corrupted it is very hard to get everyone to realize. Stevenson stated “The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned. We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated”(84). When someone allows a person of poverty to be mistreated they create a bad outlook on themselves. The world is full of injustice and inequality just because of a person’s wealth. The justice system bases the punishment of a person off the status of their race and

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