The 57 Bus By Dashka Slater

Ara Anderson

Elyse Grossman

English 8, Hour X1

2 February 2022

Power and Privlige

Dashka Slater’s impartial nonfiction “The 57 Bus” illustrates how the justice system’s stereotypes and bias can affect how someone's life will turn out. The 57 bus is the real-life story of 2 teenagers and how their lives crossed and changed forever that afternoon in 2013. The teens are Richard a 16-year-old African American who was raised in east Oakland and Sasha an 18-year-old agender senior raised in the foothills of Oakland with their parents Debbie and Karl. It follows the story of Richard lighting Sasha’s skirt on fire and the repercussions with the teens' families and the justice system after the incident. Slater's purpose for writing The 57 Bus is

For example, the families are offered restorative justice as an option; however, the district attorney’s office state this will not affect the time Richard will be serving, but “The truth was, the legal system had its own unassailable logic, a logic that couldn’t be shifted” (243). Neither Richard's family nor Sasha's family has the power to change the course of Richard's sentence. The only people with control are the court and they have a biased view against Richard and his case; they only saw him as a criminal who can not change when in reality he was a juvenile who wanted to change. Also, Darris Young, an organizer whose goal is to keep juveniles out of adult prisons says in an interview, “Why are we sending kids to prison for things that maybe they should have gotten corrected in their lives?” (234). Sending a juvenile to adult prisons won’t necessarily help solve their wrongdoings but they may be influenced by older offenders and never be able to change for the better. Richard may have never been able to get out of jail if he had been strongly influenced by older offenders even with the possibility of parole. The courts have a bias against Richard that can not be shifted even with Sasha’s family's endorsement. They control how Richard’s life will turn out while trying to solve a mistake they had the possibility of making another

“School started again. Sasha was accepted into MIT. By February life had slipped back into normality” (223). At this point Sasha’s life was returning to normal with a few exceptions; however, Richards was nowhere near normal, he was in hearings and back in juvie. Richard has no normalcy, he didn’t know if he will be on trial, still in juvie, or in an adult prison within that same month. Sasha has their life planned and knows, if everything goes smoothly, what they will be doing. For instance, the attorney’s office offers Richard a plea bargain after almost a year of back and forth. Debbie states, “I'm a little frustrated…I just want it to be done with” (254). At that point, everyone was tired of how long the sentencing had stretched out. Sasha has left for MIT but Richard was still in juvenile detention even after almost a year since the fire. While Sasha left for college and life became normal again for them Richard still has no normalcy. He and his family wouldn't know where he will end up which adds another level of uncertainty in their