Do you think that everyone who goes to jail gets a fair and just sentence?
Are you confident everyone on death row is guilty?
Do you think we should spend more on jails than education?
Do you believe we all need mercy, justice, and grace?
In his memoir, Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, the attorney who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, shares how America is in a time of mass incarceration and extreme punishment. We now spend more money on jails than education and schools. We have the highest incarceration amounts on the globe; more than 2.3 million people are in jail as of 2014. People are receiving extreme sentences for nonviolent crimes, such as life imprisonment for a few bad checks. Kids are receiving life sentences, and the amount of women in prison has increased 646 percent from 1980-2010. Mercy tends to extend only to those wealthy enough to get high-priced lawyers or with the right color of skin. Due to this, Bryan create the Equal Justice Initiative, to provide free, quality legal support for those who cannot afford it. His group fights to overturn unjust or incorrect convictions. In this book, Stevenson shares a variety of cases that demonstrate the problems listed above. The reader is introduced to women sent to prison for crimes they didn't commit, abused children hurt more by being sent to adult prisons, and a variety of men on death row for crimes they didn't commit. The main case discussed is that of Walter McMillan, a man who sentenced to death in Maycomb County, the proud of home of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, for a crime he did not commit. When Bryan first looks at his case, he can't believe Walter was sentenced to die on so little evidence, but his battle to free Walter is a long and dangerous one. Along with the stories, Stevenson provides hard facts to demonstrate the depth of the problems with the criminal justice system, and the facts will leave you shocked. Stevenson says "We are implicated when we allow others to be mistreated." This book is a wake-up call for us to rethink justice in America and fight for those who are being mistreated. It challenges us to think that "each of us is more than the worst thing we've done." I could not put this book down, and I think it is an essential read in any school that also assigns To Kill a Mockingbird. This is a book everyone should read. Highly, highly recommended!