Race, gender, and power contribute to the problems of mass incarceration. In the book ‘Just Mercy’ written by Bryan Stevenson, race, power and gender, play a big role in the mass incarceration of African Americans in Alabama. Bryan Stevenson explains how in Alabama, whites and officers often picked on African Americans and caused harm to them to convenience themselves in cases where there were murders and court cases that were mistrials or the public did not like the verdict. “...about sixty miles south of the city. Donald was walking home from the store hours after a mistrial was declared in the prosecution of a black man shooting a white police officer. Many white people were shocked.blamed the African Americans who had been permitted to serve on the jury.white men who were part of the Ku Klux Klan went out searching for …show more content…
Bridget gave birth to a stillborn, something she couldn't control, and was charged with murder. The media and public made this worse. Mental illness is a big issue in the book. Mental health affects the prisoners in the way that some prisoners are prisoners because of their mental health. A prisoner in the book, Herbert Richardson, had a mental illness that had caused him to do what he did and when he got charged, the officials and courts disregarded his mental illness. He was suffering from the side effects of the Vietnam War and had thought of some crazy way to win a girl back and when it did not go as planned, he was in trouble and his background trauma from the war was not accounted for in the courts. Bryan is trying to get the courts to recognize his past trauma and mental illnesses to try to get him a stay from death row. “...there was strong evidence that the death penalty should not be imposed because of Herbert's trauma, military service, and childhood difficulties. None of this compelling mitigating evidence was presented at trial, and it should have