Category: Just Mercy

Self-Awareness in Social Work

Within my role as a Community Health Worker, I am often faced with ethical dilemmas which require conflicting values and policies. The balance of what is morally right and wrong is constantly in my heart and mind when it comes to the vulnerable populations I work with. However, this module’s material has given me a deeper insight into what it actually means to be a self-aware social worker. I have always believed myself to be in tune with my own personal values and belief system, but now I realize that was only on a surface level. As a social worker, it is of the utmost importance to cast any judgments, biases, and assumptions about clients aside. According to Abramson, “the morally aware social worker will want to know what generates self-esteem, empowerment, and self-approval in him- or herself.”

She included numerous self-assessing questions that helped me understand my own morality, competency, and ethical viewpoints. Understanding my own self-worth, self-esteem, and ethical principles will allow me to view clients’ ethical dilemmas in a more empathic way. Previously, I attempted to take myself out of the equation and look at the client’s problem from their point of view. Now I am aware that everyone has their own individual experiences, beliefs, morals, and insights. It is impossible for me to “walk in someone’s shoes” or even see something from a client’s viewpoint because that is not my lived experience. However, I can focus on myself, the social worker making an ethical decision while concentrating on my ethical beliefs, which leads to truly being empathic and supportive.

Advocacy Inspired by Historical Voices

I am passionate about advancing human rights and eradicating social injustices. Reading King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail resonated with me. One of the most powerful statements in that letter is, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” King’s profound words immediately reminded me of what I think of as a current civil rights issue: mass incarceration.

The Influence of “Just Mercy”

According to the Equal Justice Initiative’s website, “The United States incarcerates its citizens more than any other country. Mass incarceration disproportionately impacts the poor and people of color and does not make us safer.” Bryan Stevenson, attorney, founder of EJI, and author of Just Mercy, has saved one hundred twenty-five wrongfully convicted Americans from death row. Just Mercy, Stevenson’s TED Talk, and other various articles have inspired me to learn all I can about criminal justice reform and the blemish on society our prison and criminal court system has become. A colleague and I discuss Stevenson’s work over lunch whenever we can, and we have vowed to see him speak any time he is nearby. Reading Just Mercy actually reminded me of the court system in the small rural county I am from. Stevenson states, “America’s prisons have become warehouses for the mentally ill.”

Addressing Injustice in Modern Courtrooms

Similarly, in November of last year, the Lexington Harold-Leader, reported a Circuit Court judge “ordered a 51-year-old man — poor, mentally ill, unable to read, with an extensive history of alcohol abuse — to act as his own defense lawyer.” These kinds of injustices go on significantly more than the general public realize. As a social worker, I aspire to speak out and make a change in our criminal justice system. Leading by King’s example and simply reminding others that injustices in our prisons and courtrooms are a threat to justice everywhere feels like a moral place to start.

References:

1. Abramson, M. (1996). The Social Worker as Moral Agent: Self-Esteem, Competence, and Ethical Decision Making. Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics, 3(2), Article 6.
2. King, M. L., Jr. (1963). Letter from the Birmingham Jail.
3. Stevenson, B. (n.d.). Biography.
4. Stevenson, B. (2014). Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Spiegel & Grau.
5. Lexington Herald-Leader. (2018, November 10). Judge Orders Lexington Murder Suspect To Defend Himself In Court. Retrieved from

Introduction to “Just Mercy” and Walter McMillian’s Case

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson is a book all about the injustices that happen in our justice and criminal system today. It goes over the many cases of falsely accused people, but it focuses mainly on the case of Walter McMillian, who was wrongfully accused of murder and was sentenced to death sentence in the late 1980s in the state of Alabama.

Racial Bias and False Accusations

The story of Walter McMillian is similar to many wrongfully accused cases that had a racial bias towards it. Walter was a successful businessman in his neighborhood, but his whole reputation was tarnished because of an affair he had with a white woman, Karen Kelly. It turned the whole neighborhood around, and McMillian was not seen the same anymore. Coincidentally, in the same time frame, the unfortunate murder of Ronda Morrison was also shaking the city to its core. Ralph Meyers, a local white man who was involved with Karen Kelly, had accused Walter McMillian of the murder of Ronda Morrison. At the time, sadly, there were not many sheriff’s offices that were not racist, so this part is not different either from many other stories.

The Flawed Justice System and Stevenson’s Fight

The racist sheriff’s office obviously believed Ralph Meyer’s accusation of Walter McMillian and went on with the case as if Walter was truly the murderer without any notice of evidence of an investigation. They did everything in the name of against the law, such as bribed witness testimonies, and forced Myers to testify even though he did not want to in the latter. Walter was finally convicted of murder, and that left his wife and kids completely alone.

While he was waiting on death row, that is when he met Stevenson. Stevenson saw the sorrow and the injustice being made towards McMillian and his family in this case, ad he decided to take on the case. Years pass by, and Walter’s whole neighborhood shows Stevenson and Walter nothing but support, and they feel the pain as a whole community. Stevenson tries to go through a retrial and multiple appeals throughout the year as well, but Stevenson discovers much, much more than that. He discovers vile racism and corruption in the criminal justice system.

The heartbreaking case goes on and on, and as each day goes on, more evidence against law officials is found than against McMillian. In between crevices of the book, Stevenson also discusses other cases where the criminal justice system is serving everything but justice. Stevenson brings up many cases of juveniles getting sentenced to homicidal and nonhomicidal crimes. He goes deeper into the topic of juvenile sentencing and how juveniles are usually abused in the prison system. He makes multiple points where he defends juvenile offenders because of their past, such as abusive household history, mental difficulties, and horrible upbringings, things that affected them and their decisions at the time.

He speaks about the case of Marsha Colbey, who was known as a “killer mother,” but she was not the only one. “Killer Mothers” was a name given to many low-income and mentally disabled mothers in these areas. Basically, throughout the whole entire book, Stevenson goes through many cases of racially discriminating cases in the criminal justice system. He shows us the true colors of what it truly looks like behind the scenes.

Biblical Perspective and Final Justice

If one looks at the case of Walter McMillian from a biblical point of view, it truly is unjust and not what Jesus would want in anyone’s path. Bible passage; Genesis 1:27, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” explains that He has created all of us equally and in the image of him. Inequality is unacceptable in His eyes because we are all in the imagery of Him and also made by Him, so very clearly, the treatment that McMillian had gotten just because of his skin color was sinful in itself.

The truth behind cases such as Walter McMillian still is very hidden to this day. A lot of false and accusatory statements are going around putting innocent people behind bars just because of the way that He has created them, their skin color. As many years ago as this case was, inequality and injustice still lie in courtrooms today and are not really seen by the naked eye unless someone looks deeply enough.
At the end of the case, Walter McMillian was finally released after serving six years on death row. Love, support, celebration, and cheers were run, really, throughout the whole country. It was truly one of the most well-known cases with these circumstances at the time.

Walter McMillian ended with justice being served, but it started with injustice flooding minds and hearts over the country. In a world where God’s truth was taken seriously, cases like this would not exist, and innocent people like McMillian would not have to be separated from their families in the first place.

References:

1. Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Spiegel & Grau, 2015.

“Just Mercy”: A Glimpse into Injustice

Just Mercy is a story written by Bryan Stevenson from a personal experience where he speaks more about justice, mercy, and empathy. In the entire story, he claims that the rate of injustices has increased and that people are being sentenced to death and life imprisonment for wrongly accused crimes.

The writer goes ahead to state that every individual, or rather every society, must be able to always pick empathy and mercy over blames and castigation or rather punishment. Bryan was born to an impoverished black family, and thus he witnessed a lot of things in the society and community that, in his way of viewing, they were wrongly done. In his line of duty or even outside it, Stevenson worked tirelessly to help the marginalized people in the community. He says that the justice system for criminals is very unfair, and he works towards improving it and helping those who may have fallen into the hands of the system unfairly.

Bryan’s Journey of Offering Aid

According to his story, the writer has helped juveniles, low-income women, and also men who he feels were accused wrongly. It is after so doing that he feels it has changed his way of understanding some aspects and virtues in life like mercy, hope, kindness, and most of all and much significant the issue of justice. The writer points out different scenarios or rather cases that he had to intervene to help those involved. He goes ahead to quote that the poor people and minorities are the most affected in society by the corrupt, unfair, and injustice systems.

Chapter Insights: “Uncried Tears” and Trina’s Story

In chapter 8 of Just Mercy, Bryan begins with a poem called “Uncried Tears,” which is written by one of the inmates he encountered. The poem talks about a fight between suppressed tears and bitter conscience where the tears are even begging to be let free, but the conscience is quick to answer that if they are let free, then they will end up dead. In the same chapter, the author talks about a young person by the name of Trina, who was raised in a family that knew no justice and rights. Trina’s father is said to have been abusing his wife physically by beating her and even his children, and this led to Trina’s psychiatric problems.

When her mum died, she could not afford psychiatric services, and thus her condition worsened. One thing led to another, and she found herself in court, and no one dared produce a letter to indicate the little girl had some mental illness, and thus, she was charged with murder. What surprises me most is that she was not sent to juvenile but was held in the women’s prison, where she got raped by the guard, leaving her pregnant. Her cry had no one to listen to it, and thus the guard was just chased away, but Trina got no justice as not even a single compensation was given to her. The theme of male violence is strongly brought out by the author of Trina’s story and also shows the issue of poverty and vulnerability without any protection and assistance from justice.

Themes of Poverty and Racial Inequalities in Justice

Stevenson clearly states that when children are homeless and affected by poverty, then they are at risk of committing various juvenile crimes, as these three things are related or somewhat connected as he tells us. The theme of poverty is also brought out when the selected or appointed lawyer for Trina is not able to protect her by even providing the relevant letter from the hospital (Hanink 24). This shows a lack of enough resources to even hire or acquire qualified counsel.

In the past, youths were not easily accused of crimes except black youths. In a story told by the author about George, a 14-year-old boy who was accused of murder. He was charged after informing the locals who were searching for two white girls that he had seen them picking flowers, and they were found dead. In the court of law where no black man was allowed in, the sheriff said that George was the last one to see the two girls and that he had confessed to the murder and therefore charged with it.

This story shows the issue of racial inequalities in the criminal justice system. Bryan says that George’s story clearly illustrates how vulnerable black people are in the hands of whites. This man was accused because of his willingness to help, his honesty, and probably the fact that he was a black person.

In his stories, Bryan Stevenson shows how the legal criminal justice systems, which are supposed to be helping the people in America, be at the forefront in offering justice and be able to act fairly and offer required justice, have been used to extremely oppress the marginalized people in the societies. The author tries to analyze many of his various clients’ cases to show the problems, weaknesses, and failures in the criminal justice system. He thinks that every individual has a part to play in making the system right as it is directly reflected in the values and society as a whole.

References:

1. Stevenson, B. (2014). Just Mercy. Spiegel & Grau.

Pervasive Police Injustice:

After reading Just Mercy and All American Boys, I was astonished by the controversial topics I had read in each book. They discussed topics such as racial injustice and police brutality, which have been argued about for years. At first, I thought I understood these topics and how they affect people, but reading about them gave me a larger perspective on them. Just Mercy follows a young attorney named Bryan Stevenson, who shoulders the weight of many difficult cases. His cases have ranged from life imprisonment of children to an innocent colored man on death row.

This historical nonfiction gave me a new perspective on an old, broken law system that was used less than 50 years ago by the U.S. Next. All American Boys is a fiction trailing an African American teen named Rashad, who was wrongly accused of stealing and brutally beaten by a police officer. Reading this book showed me how upsetting police brutality is. Both books showed me how police and racial injustice can affect people on a large scale. These two books have shared valuable information with me. They have shown me what is alike and different about them, and they have opened my eyes to how our world is today.

Racial Injustice: A Lingering Scar:

Throughout these books, I have noticed that they both share a lot about police injustice. In Just Mercy, a woman named Ronda Morrison was murdered at a store. Nobody, including the police, knew who murdered Ronda. Soon, people started to get angry and blame the police for not catching the criminal. To please the angered public, the police arrested an innocent African American man named Walter and claimed he murdered Ronda. Though in reality, Walter was at a fish fry during the time and day of the murder. Later, Walter was sent to Alabama’s death row, awaiting execution.

The police bribed and threatened many people to lie in court, making a false story about what happened the day of the murder to keep Walter on death row. As well as in Just Mercy, All American Boys also had their fair share of police injustice. At the beginning of the book, a white police officer named Paul beats an African American teenager named Rashad brutally on the sidewalk outside of a store named Jerry’s. Rashad was sent to the hospital immediately, which caused conflict between people. Paul later claimed that Rashad had been caught stealing and resisted arrest. He said he was just doing his job, and that caused controversy for many people. Both books shared examples of police injustice and how it affected people. Following police injustice was something that is still upsetting today.

Apart from police injustice, both books shared a lot about racial injustice and how colored people were often mistreated based on their looks. In All American Boys, after Rashad was beaten and sent to the hospital, his brother Spoony arrived the next day to see if his younger brother was all right. After hearing Rashad’s side of the story, Spoony was outraged, saying that this happens all the time and nobody bothers to stop it.

Later, Rashad explains to the readers why Spoony was so angry, saying, “He was always a suspect. And I knew, without him saying a word, that the one thing he never wanted, but was sure to eventually happen, was for his little brother-the ROTC art kid-to become one too”. Both Spoony and Rashad are people of color, and for Spoony’s whole life, the way he looked affected the way that people viewed him. Spoony had always been a suspect to everyone, and he didn’t want his brother to become one too.

Similar to All American Boys, Just Mercy showed how racist thoughts clouded the minds of many people. At the beginning of the book, when Stevenson first reviewed Walter’s case, he does not agree with why Walter was put on death row, and he shares his thoughts about his case with the readers stating, “But there was no evidence against McMillian-no evidence except that he was an African American man involved in an adulterous interracial affair, which meant he was reckless and possibly dangerous, even if he had no prior criminal history and a good reputation.

Maybe that was evidence enough”. The only evidence that the public used to condemn Walter was from an “affair” he had with a white woman named Karen Kelly. What also added to that corrupt mage was the lies that the police had told people about Walter. They claimed he was in a gang and was also a Drug kingpin, which scared many people. Both books seemed to have much to talk about concerning police injustice and how it can affect people in the long run. Now, we start to see more about how books are different from each other.

Differing Focuses in Both Narratives:

Apart from both books sharing similarities, they also have many differences, such as which the book focuses more on. In Just Mercy, apart from Walters’s case, there were also many cases that mentioned children being prosecuted as adults either for mistakes, petty crimes, or being framed. Many of these cases Stevenson explained to the readers really put into perspective how broken the U.S. law system was not that long ago.

Stevenson explains how many kids have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, saying that “Our litigation strategy was complicated by the fact that more than 2,500 children in the United States had been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole”. That many kids sentenced to life imprisonment without parole is a ridiculously high number of kids prosecuted in the U.S. It is sad to hear that so many children had their lives thrown away by having to spend the rest of their lives in an adult prison, feeling utterly scared and alone.

In All American Boys, instead of focusing on imprisoned children, the book focuses more on colored people who had their lives taken away by police brutality. Nearing the end of the book, Rashad, accompanied by friends and family, formed a protest against police brutality. They started a march at Jerry’s and ended the march with a die-in at the front doors of the police department. During the die-in, Spoony’s girlfriend Berry starts a roll call, calling the names of the unarmed colored people who had been killed by police.

After each name was called, the crowd responded by saying, “Absent again today.” When Berry did her roll call, the names on her list were names of people who had died of a gunshot fired by a police officer. Each of those names mentioned in the roll call scene were actual people who had lives of their own. They had lived lives similar to you and me, but theirs ended with a gunshot fired by a police officer who didn’t understand that they weren’t doing anything wrong.

Relevance in Today’s World:

As well as in All American Boys and Just Mercy, our world today shares many controversies regarding race and police brutality similar to the books. An example of both police brutality and racial discrimination shown in both books is an incident that happened near the beginning of 2018. NBA African American player Sterling Brown was tased and arrested on an early morning errand at a drugstore on January 26. He walked out of the drugstore to an awaiting white police officer standing outside of his car.

The officer then started to question him and called back up to the scene. Soon, Brown was surrounded and pushed to the ground, only to be tasered and handcuffed for a mere parking violation. This shows how the police can be to people of color and how they can act poorly in a situation that does not require any sense of brutality. This incident is similar to both books regarding the fact that in each book, the police acted poorly in a tight situation, and they took drastic measures because the victim was a person of color. This goes to show just how sad people’s judgment can be.

After reading both books, my eyes have been opened to many conflicts and struggles that people face today. Comparing both books, they have many similarities and differences, but they are more similar than different. They both share police injustice, racial injustice, and the struggles of being someone of color. They also have differences in what the book is focused on as well. Just Mercy focused on life-imprisoned children, whereas All American Boys focused on how people of color were perceived. These books have shown me many valuable truths about what is wrong with our world today, and I learned many things from both of them.

References:

1. Bell, K. (2018, May 25). Sterling Brown arrest: Milwaukee Police release body-cam video. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/24/us/milwaukee-police-sterling-brown-video/index.html
2. Reynolds, J., & Kiely, B. (2015). All American Boys. Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books.
3. Stevenson, B. (2014). Just Mercy. Spiegel & Grau.

The prison industrial complex is a term used to describe the massive increase in prison population across the nation due to a rapid increase in privatized prisons, and big businesses that supply different goods and services to these private prisons for profit. Angela Davis describes the prison industrial complex as the government and certain industries having an overlapping interest in policing, surveillance, and imprisonment as their solution to solve economic, social, and political problems going on in the country.

The prison industrial complex emerged throughout the 1950s due to the expansion of privatized prisons. The prison-industrial complex consists of politicians who capitalize on fear by campaigning on campaigns called ‘get tough on crime.’ State and federal lobbyists serving jail industries and companies benefiting from cheap jail labor. Prisoners are paid hardly any money when corporations make enormous profits from their labor which is mandatory. This system is much more focused on taking advantage of these people who are incarcerated as if they are nothing more than real estate. The people who are suffering from this system are the people who are being incarcerated or who are already incarcerated for minor crimes in they are forced into prisons and in a lot of cases go through a cycle of getting locked up off of something very minor and then once they get out they have no money, no job, no family and end up behind bars simply off of them trying to survive. Looking more closely at this you can see how easily someone could fall into this never-ending cycle. Along with this, the private prisons are profiting off of keeping these people in prison so these privatized prisons have no motivation to get people out of the place, On the other hand, they are trying to bring more people into the prison system so that they can make more money off of the labor that the prisoners are providing for close to no money. The prison industrial complex operates by the people heavily influencing it. It’s composed of high-up legislators who play with the fear factor by focusing on campaigns labeled ‘getting tough on crime’.

In this unit, we talked about the prison system and how the system is rigged or swayed toward minorities to target them. Going into this unit I was quite eager to talk about the prison system due to the fact that this topic extremely interests me and I have also taken classes in high school that have talked about the prison system and its flaws. In my senior year of high school, I took a class called American Literature of Social Change. In this class, we read the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson which covers the topic of the prison system in the United States. This class soon became one of my favorite classes to this day because I became extremely interested and involved in social justice which all started from taking this class. The author Bryan Stevenson also came to the University of Minnesota to give a speech about his book Just Mercy which I attended. Having heard about his experience firsthand was such an incredible thing to see live which only enhanced my interest in social justice. Going into this class I was nervous about whether I would like Are Prisons Obsolete as much or more than Just Mercy. Now after reading, I feel as if I have learned so much more on top of what I learned in American Literature of Social Change. I now have so much understanding of how the prison system is operated and what types of things go on in prisons which is quite eye-opening.

Society is falling apart as the powers of division develop, becoming tenacious, dividing individuals. We are losing trust in one another and in the future of the country and even the world. Sentiments of dissatisfaction, feebleness and loss are making us powerless against stories such as the ‘us versus them’ accounts, which turns one against the other. The country itself is openly broken apart and people are grown different and see others as different and even lower at points and it is defined in their actions, as in, the actions one has committed that the outer sources discover and think it defines the whole person. There is an illusion, that if a terrible decision defines us. There is a term that I believe in, that I feel should be explored upon and heard by so many because so many people need to hear it. The term “Each of us is better than the worst thing we’ve ever done” brings forth the mindset that you background matters and deeper within, we can reconcile and rebuild to create something brighter, and better for all.

The previous term comes out of “Just Mercy”, a book authored by highly accomplished lawyer, activist Bryan Stevenson. In this book, Stevenson accounts for some of his most memorable cases and experiences. The case in which he mainly centers around is the case of Walter McMillan. Walter McMillian, a black man, was indicted and condemned to death for the homicide of a youthful white woman who was a clerk in a laundromat in Monroeville, Alabama. Mr. McMillian was hung waiting for capital punishment preceding being indicted and condemned to death. His trial was swift, going just a day and a half. Three witnesses testified against Mr. McMillian and the jury disregarded justification from other witnesses. The trial’s judge abrogated the jury’s verdict of life in prison and condemned Mr. McMillian to death. Bryan Stevenson took looking into the case in postconviction, where he demonstrated that the State’s witnesses had lied on the stand and the indictment had illegally smothered exculpatory evidence involving the case. Mr. McMillian’s conviction was dropped by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals in 1993 and prosecutors concurred the case had been misused. Mr. McMillian was discharged in 1993 in the wake of going through six years waiting for capital punishment for a wrongdoing he did not even commit. This was an amazing book that could really change a person’s view of things when really analyzed.

In reading the book, I found a case that truly shook me. Antonio Nuñez experienced childhood in Los Angeles with a physically abusive and careless dad. As a kid, he was sentenced to probation for nonviolent offenses. Bryan Stevenson writes in “Just Mercy” that because of police profiling, poor and minority youth frequently create criminal records for ‘behavior that more affluent children engage in with impunity.’ (155). In 1999, a drive-by shooter shot Antonio in his stomach, side, and arm and murdered Antonio’s 14 year old brother. After hospitalization, Antonio went to live with relatives in a more secure community in Nevada, where his grades and conduct improved. Within a year, however, he was summoned back to Los Angeles because he was still serving probation following being a ward of the court for a prior offense. Antonio suffered in his return to Los Angeles as Stevenson describes that, “Nunez suffered trauma symptoms, including flashbacks, an urgent need to avoindata area, a heightened awareness of potential threats, and an intensified need to protect himself from real or perceived threats.” (155). This lead to him purchasing a gun for self-defense, but he was quickly arrested and placed in a juvenile camp because of it. When released from camp, this is where we return to what occurred.

Stevenson exhibits the connection between neglect and child abuse and early crime, including the effect of neighborhood and community. The judge’s impression of Antonio as miserable demonstrates that he considers Antonio to be inherently bad. The judge neglects to see Antonio as a young child who is as yet changing. Interestingly, Stevenson shows the association between changes in Antonio’s condition and changes in his conduct, recommending this ought to have been considered. Stevenson’s contention with police profiling further supports the book’s contentions about separation in the criminal equity framework against minorities and poor people.

This is no hoax either. I myself have seen the atrocities committed by the police force. I respect our police for the most part, but I know there is a problem with some officers. I’ve seen people beaten by police with my own eyes. I’ve seen people easily get off and guess what, they were white, but I’ve seen the same act take place and it be a black or brown person and it’s like there is a terrorist attack situation going on. This concerns me and makes me think, why? Why must it be like this?

In our world, recognizing that individuals with disabilities are part of human existence, people must actively work to reduce inequities in society. People with disabilities often experience lower education levels and obtain fewer resources, and their health is not as important to them as people without disabilities. In many instances, they do not receive the crucial care one needs to survive. Eliminating these disadvantages among people with disabilities should be a critical aspect of society. The three ways the California Prison system can reduce disability disparities are emergency preparedness, institutionalization, and training dispatchers and police, which benefits mentally ill individuals to properly heal and reduces injustice in society.

Training those who focus on emergency preparedness in assisting those with disabilities, will help diminish the prison population because it offers various support accommodations. As the CDC workbook states, during times of emergency, disabled individuals have easy access to special needs. In addition, to understand this problem, the rhetorical device, logos can support this idea when it says, “to define, locate, and reach special, vulnerable, and At-risk Populations in an emergency: This CDC workbook is intended to provide public health and emergency preparedness planners with better ways to communicate health and emergency information to at-risk individuals. Disabled individuals could have access and functional needs for all-hazards events through step-by-step instructions, resource guides, and templates” [logos]. This study illustrates a clear reference of how it involves system-level responsiveness that assures that individuals with disabilities and their support systems are incorporated in all levels of preparedness, evacuation, and recovery by establishing adaptive strategies such as shelter accommodations on a community-wide scale. As expressed, this reform is a proactive, progressive policy that reduces the number of people in these facilities.

Establishing institutions to treat the mentally ill, helps reduce the disabled disparities in the California prison system by providing a healing space instead of them rotting in prison. In the novel Just Mercy, as Stevenson explains, he uses pathos to demonstrate that without installing mental health institutions, “the inability of many disabled, low-income people to receive treatment and necessary medication dramatically increased their likelihood of a police encounter that would result in jail or prison time” [pathos]. This study illustrates a clear understanding of how the development of various health institutions will decrease disabled disparities and greatly impact the lives of prisoners. Without it, there is no proper healing, and the number of people incarcerated increases. As revealed, establishing institutions will assist in diminishing disabled disparities because if one with disabilities experiences a problem in their life, these institutions will affect their mental and physical health. It will also allow them to recover safely, causing the mass prison population to decrease.

There are a lot of concerns regarding how training dispatchers do not help to treat disabled disparities in the California prison system. These officers are known as training dispatchers and their job is to divert people with mental health issues who commit low-level nuisance crimes to these behavioral health centers. On the other hand, it is not helpful to reduce mass incarceration in California because it states that there is a “lack of accessible and appropriate mental health treatment in the society for mentally ill people and plays a part in society and affects perceptions of dangerousness by police, prosecutors, and judges; and in part, because prison staff, probation officers, and training dispatchers, fail to recognize and accommodate people with disabilities or mental illnesses.” This study illustrates that training dispatchers are required to identify if someone has a mental illness. This new way will not help decrease disabled disparities in the California prison system because if officers fail to recognize if someone has a mental illness, crime will still occur, and the disabled will still be mentally ill instead of getting treated. On the contrary, these statements about training dispatchers are incorrect because these officers are fully trained appropriately to recognize if someone has a mental health problem and perform the job with a master’s in training.

In California, through the action of installing institutions, training dispatchers, and emergency preparedness in society, these factors will play an important role in reducing mass incarceration by assisting those in need and decreasing disabled disparities. Emergency preparedness will help the idea of diminishing incarceration by implementing adaptive strategies for those in need. Training dispatchers will fully identify disabled people and place them in recovery when they need it. Lastly, institutionalization provides healing institutions where mentally ill patients can get properly healed before returning to society. These three ways will benefit people with disabled disparities and allow them to properly survive in a community instead of rotting in prison without regard for their help. Reducing disparities is a significant ideal, and if it is accomplished, people with mental illness will get appropriate treatment and properly flourish in Californian society.

Work cited:

1. Rinde, Tyler. “New Law Provides Opportunities for Mental Health Diversion.” CBHDA, CBHDA, 2 May 2019, https://www.cbhda.org/blog-1/2019/5/2/new-law-provides-opportunities-for-mental-health-diversion.
2. STEVENSON, BRYAN. JUST MERCY: A Story of Justice and Redemption. SCRIBE PUBLICATIONS, 2020.
3. Blueprint for Smart Justice California. https://50stateblueprint.aclu.org/assets/reports/SJ-Blueprint-CA.pdf.

We the people core our society, policies, and laws to ensure protection and safety for residents in our governed body. We implement systems to keep peace and order. Yet what about the injustices within these laws? Individuals have the ability to find peace amidst the storms that threaten us during the journey of life. In this world, there is not one living being that can better interpret our personal experience than the individual themself. More specifically, the experience of living in American society. For about two centuries in history, this nation has witnessed the normalization of separatism, exploitation of privilege, and lack of consideration for lives not categorized by European qualifications. During the later centuries of racial practicing, we observed and advocated the right for civil rights, equality, education, laws of protection, and ultimately humanization of the black citizen. Much progress was made, segregation was outlawed, and civil rights laws were revised and revisited. However, progress over the course of history is relentlessly suppressed and has begun gradually rewinding. In the writings of Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, we have immediately met with the answer to past and current abate progression in this country’s social construct: the blindness of the nation. Stevenson dedicates an opening page of the novel with a quote reading “Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument” representing and instilling the peace that is to be found in fighting for equality within the justice system; that the disreadgation of black people in American society is an ever-reoccurring act that has taken place far too long. This drive to change enacted systems of inequality Stevenson divulges in the writings of his personal journey of perseverance, addresses the denial of a corrupt justice system. With the asset of utilizing the suppression of African and brown Americans, the privilege of white Americans is rooted and thriving while celebration and accreditation are drying out and dying; its essence is being stolen. With the exemplification of Walter McMillian, an African American man wrongfully accused of murder and sentenced to the death penalty, Stevenson engages us on a thought-proving journey pushing the ideology of empathic correction over the condemnation and punishment utilized in America. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the order of events in the U.S. Criminal Justice system and to expose the manipulation of said laws and proceedings to the advantages and disadvantages of classified counterparts in our nation by way of correcting misconceptions of Black Nationalism, exposing the existence of the empathic gap, and covering the impact of racial profiling.

The undeniable difference between the separations in motives of American political movements is quite frankly summarized as either enforcing suppression or denying it. As history shows, Black Nationalism, unity, and the creation of endorsed, and facilitated, structures were a necessity to gain resources due to their denial in organizations that their white counterparts endorsed. The ideology of chauvinism is, to my understanding, the belief or an attitude held by a specifically classified person or persons of superiority or higher importance over groups not included in this specifically classified order. One of the largest themes visited frequently throughout Stevenson’s is humanization and advocacy, the very polar opposite of every meaning chauvinism represents. Stevenson states “We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent” (Chapter 10. 293) Contrary to white nationalism, which finds solace in riots, discrimination, separation, bigotry, and mass murder, this theory of black nationalism, enacts by education. Education of our rights, education on our history, and education to ensure the act of physical attributes solidifying judgment on a person’s character does not further continue in future generations.

To understand, how socially made constructs, such as race and class affect the rulings of the minoritized in the nation, separations need to be made. Race and racism are differentiated constructs. Race can be seen as lacking a concrete meaning, however purposely constructed and transformed through competing political lenses through links between structural and cultural aspects of race in American society. Yet, we are in a time where race has been utilized as a tool for racism; the gateway to oppression. In Chapter One we find that “fears of interracial sex was a powerful force in dismantling Reconstruction after the Civil War, sustaining Jim Crow laws for a century and fueling divisive racial politics throughout the twentieth century” (Stevenson 27) we see how race has been transcribed from a sense of identity to the driving mechanism behind dominance and trounce over those seen as lesser.

American advances can currently and accurately be represented by the image of an unbalanced beam. With improvements furthering our knowledge, in sciences, forms of communications, and many other barriers that stood in society’s way being triumphed, the nation fails to pursue the advancements to be made regarding equality. Due to the lack of citizen grounding in the reality of racism, there is a lack of a set agreement on the basic facts that establish racial tendencies. Therefore, the only logistical solution would be the discovery of racism as an individual task and not one on the scale of national level, due to the imperial powers of influence from corrupt minds and negligent sources of correct information. Being a segregated society,

Racial profiling and racial empathic disparities are contentious issues in U.S. law enforcement policy. The practice of using race as a part of a profile when attempting to identify criminal activity has been used in various ways, such as pulling individuals over on highways and the in-depth questioning of airline passengers of a certain race and at border crossings. Profiling has been used to justify and create automatic assumptions on the finding of drug smugglers, terrorists, and undocumented immigrants. Racial profiling is a problem that is gaining widespread notoriety in the United States. With its continuous growth, profiling is beginning to be demonstrated, not only in interactions with law enforcement, projecting out to younger individuals, by appearing in schools, workplaces, and disgustingly in neighborhood communities. Does being African American in America cause individuals to be targeted? This additionally applies to the belief of lacking the ability to feel, experience, or resonate with basic emotions all civilians have, regardless of race, yet this ideology of African Americans lacking it has caused harsher punishment in our system, especially regarding our juvenile justice.

The correlation of attributes possessed by influence and manipulation can be represented in a simple illustration of the distinction of conflict known as the Lock and Key theory. A lock is designed to be passable by a singular, creatively crafted key, however, the utilization of advances in society allows the lock unbarred by inventions such as master keys, production of multiple copies, etc.; metaphorically elaborating on the unrestricted ingress to inquire material (society’s “lock”). Advancing the use of this publicly obtained information inevitably will express similar characteristics to its predecessor. “We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and weak” (Stevenson 69). Contrariety configures phenomenally between the two categorial terms in the methods of how these commons are developed. Commons through the perception of manipulation requires precision, and tactful measures to obtain permission for content necessitating manipulative actions and achieving a “trustworthy” relationship with the provider of the resources. The installment of automation and its functionality, as expressed in the novel’s writings as algorithms serve as a pivotal element benefiting the suited classification of manipulation.

Relatively, social change defines the development of global capitalism with a focus on changing relationships between markets, states, and civil societies. By this definition, the question arises, Where is the line of separation between power and inequality created? What constitutes justified oppression from the unjust? According to Stevenson, the answer lies within the culture promoting gentrified tendencies. The commonality exposed to the white race and their domineering leverage connects with the historical arguments of leaders promoting inequality, particularly “Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who have earned it, who haven’t even sought it, are most meaningful recipients of our compassion” (Stevenson 189). However, in the present day, the oppression of the masses to benefit the few has broadened out of strictly black under white.

An institution or social change that is not mercenary to one audience must initiate the recognition of some oppression that is contributing to the sum of suffering and or diminishing the ideal importance and happiness of the mass audience. Raceless antiracism and enforcements of socially constructed survival of the fittest are self-absorbed structures, belligerently habituating ignorance in addressing public executions and proclaiming black and brown lives lack importance because all lives possess importance, is a band-aid solution to a bullet hole problem. Issues must be addressed head-on to properly resolve them. The strive for social change unempathetically lacks morality and consideration of precedents. Society has band-aided poverty, homelessness, and low-income areas creating a normality that the reality is, that we live in a free market society. The wealthy have earned their right to live in the city. Ironically it resembles the solution to American racism. By not acknowledging the importance of historically oppressed races, the advantage and power still remain in the “hardworking, rightfully earned” wealthy to declare indeed all lives matter….to an extent of course. This inappropriate disruptive justification for the eviction of longtime residents, landmarks of small businesses, historical buildings, parks, and rituals spearheads the social change movement, and has created a division in once unified communities.

Ultimately, Perception is influenced by an individual’s subconsciousness. What is perceived is dependent on developed apprehensions the mind makes. When we are born, our mind is a blank slate, and each day of life we gain and perceive the environment we are placed in by hearing, seeing, and feeling our experiences. Concepts, ideologies, and theories all stem from and remain unrecognizable to the mind until it is learned to give meaning. This ability for individuals to hold unique discernments permits society, to be ever-growing, learning, and, however, conflicting. While it is recognized our technological advances and evolution, derive from different aspects of focus because of varying perceptions, it would be unjust to additionally recognize the social distribution of equality, and the contrastive definitions of justice versus injustice. the issue of how an individual’s perception of their being is not the definition of self and directly affects the consideration and perspectives of others and society as a whole Individuals have the ability to find peace amidst the storms that threaten us during the journey of life. In this world, there is not one living being that can better interpret our personal experience than the individual themself. More specifically, the experience of living in American society. For about two centuries in history, this nation has witnessed the normalization of separatism, exploitation of privilege, and lack of consideration for lives not categorized by European, higher-class qualifications. During the later centuries of class practicing, we observed and advocated the right for civil rights, equality, education, laws of protection, and ultimately freedom of speech and humanization of every citizen.

Citation

1. Stevenson, Bryan Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. New York Spiel & Grau Trade 2014

Oscar Wilde’s claim is a valuable human trait since most changes in world history are caused by disobedience or rebellion which it does promotes social progress. Disobedience nowadays is justified by changes such as the civil rights movement or the black lives matter movement in which people of color fight for their rights which in other people’s minds can be seen as disobedience acknowledging the facts that people don’t put up with racial standards and request change. In Brayan Stevenson’s book, Just Mercy a lawyer defends the lives of convicted criminals on death row the majority are black. He addresses many situations in which the act of rebellion and disobedience is reflected.

Stevenson begins by demonstrating ways he’s tried to stand up for those prisoners on death row which at the time was unusual that blacks got the rights they deserved. He started by exemplifying his actions towards the Supreme Court. For example, EJI, ‘s appeal was sent to the Supreme Court to ban mandatory sentences for convicted prisoners on death row. In which he was victorious and opened new possibilities for the future defendant. They support Mr. Wild’s argument because that was the first step to change. Meaning, that to begin with standing up to the Supreme Court that’s a huge shift where the author includes these details as an active resistance to prison Normal that should be changed and administrated. The fact that the appeal went through indicates how resistance helped promote social progress. To continue, the novel also demonstrates the treatment of people who decided to seek change. for example, Stevenson includes the black older man in the wheelchair showing that he had scars on top of his head from which he tried to register to vote and received those punishments In addition he also has scars on the side of his head which he got by demanding civil rights and those scars and are not scars but medals of honor. many rebellions were not successful but with the ongoing fight for equality until this day blacks both have their civil rights and the right to vote rights that all humans should have This act of disobedience had major consequences but in the end like Wild said disobedience progress is made and thanks to people like the man in the wheelchair and like EJI brown and black people have the rights

To continue Stevenson also kept on with ongoing protests for black and brown rights and created a memorial to honor African Americans who were cruelly lynched due to racial inequality happening at the time. For example, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice was opened for victims of American white supremacy It was a way for many innocent souls to be recognized being victims of racial discrimination. This supports the wild argument that Stevenson’s works are the types of protest in which he is trying to conserve the past so that people wouldn’t forget the reality of the past and by keeping the stories alive it gives a voice to the ones who didn’t have one. Also, the museum contains 800 weather still columns in which each lists names of the ones who were lynched Stevenson spent many years trying to document the racial terrors of lynching he also collects jars of soil from the sides of the lynchings. To conclude Stevenson makes this memorial to liberate America in which he wants to bring out the truth and reality of the past and how these people will stay alive through this memorial I will be given a voice even after death their death will not be ignored. In the end, the way disobedience is a valuable human trait Wild claims is what exactly promotes social justice Ceiling throughout Stevenson’s book and his memorial shows how keeping the spirit and helping with the lives of the convicted.