American society is obsessed with safety. We spend millions of dollars implementing systems to try to keep citizens safe. What is often overlooked is the corruption found in America's criminal justice system, the transgressions that occur daily, and how these problems end thousands of innocent lives every year. In his short story Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson brings to light many of the issues surrounding the American criminal justice system. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay His personal accounts of his experiences in the American criminal justice system reveal that criminal and social justice, race, and mercy are all closely related in American society. These issues are all, in their own way, classic American ideals. Just Mercy demonstrates the need for American society to recognize the social injustice that occurs in American criminal cases – based on discrepancies of race and wealth – and show mercy and compassion to combat the injustice. Many American citizens would associate criminal justice with a feeling of safety. This is a system our government would implement to catch criminals and put them behind bars, letting people go to bed at night feeling safe. However, Stevenson takes a different approach to criminal justice. Rather than point out the benefits, Stevenson talks about the injustice that occurs within our supposed criminal “justice” system. Stevenson practices law in Alabama and Georgia, two Deep South states with a cultural undercurrent that has a significant impact on his work. Many clients represented by Stevenson are African American and part of a community still trying to recover from legal segregation, such as Jim Crow laws. In addition to recovering from the Reconstruction of the South, the African American community still experiences serious hate crimes. This element of racism leads to injustice in Stevenson's cases, where impoverished black teenagers are often falsely accused or punished in extreme ways. The main plot followed by Just Mercy is that of Walter McMillian, a black man who was put on death row for a murder he didn't commit. Despite the overwhelming evidence of Walter's innocence, the racist culture in Alabama caused many law officials to simply overlook the evidence. Stevenson notes that “reading the report showed (to him) that there were people willing to ignore evidence, logic and common sense to convict someone and reassure the community that the crime had been solved and the killer punished.” (Stevenson 112 ). This shows that in this case, and in many cases similar to the McMillian case, American society was willing to overlook truth and justice to gain a sense of false security. Law officers didn't care if they caught the right criminal, as long as they had a scapegoat, especially if the suspect was African American and didn't have the means to afford a big-name lawyer. Closely linked to the idea of ​​criminal justice is that of social justice. Stevenson's book shows that by practicing social justice we can achieve a criminal justice that is not corrupt. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson has dedicated his life to creating social and criminal justice. For Stevenson, a big part of that has been building rapport and trust with his clients. Despite his busy schedule, Stevenson is alwaysbeen close to his customers, stating in his book that "we talked about the food Walter liked, the jobs he had held when he was younger. We talked about race and power, the things we saw that were funny, and the things that we saw that they were sad” (Stevenson 103). Stevenson also tells Walter that “‘everyone needs help, so we're trying'” (Stevenson 103). the way Stevenson made a difference and the way he practiced social justice He tells a story about how he represented a young boy who shot his abusive stepfather (Stevenson 121) and stories of children who were tried as adults and sentenced to die. in prison. He writes about how to find, expose, and attempt to reverse these injustices has painted a clear picture of what social justice truly means: fairness and equality for all, regardless of what race or socioeconomic status a person comes from. Unfortunately, racial divisions play a major role in creating injustice. This reveals the hypocrisy of America: we value diversity, calling ourselves the “great melting pot.” We value justice and equality, two principles on which our country was founded. Yet despite all this, legal officials continue to make ridiculous charges against men like Walter, simply because they don't care about finding justice for a black man, and they can get away with it. Stevenson references a story by WEB Du Bois about the lynching of a black man who had become a teacher. Stevenson reflects on the impact of lynching on that man's community, speculating that "There would be more distrust, more animosity, and more injustice" (Stevenson 101). Similarly, Stevenson believes that everyone in Walter's hometown of Monroeville will judge the black community based solely on Walter's beliefs: “Walter's family and most of the poor blacks in his community were equally burdened by Walter's beliefs... The pain in that trailer was tangible: I could feel it. The community seemed desperate for some hope of justice. The realization left me anxious but determined” (Stevenson 101). In this way, it becomes clear that the injustice in these small Southern towns is a vicious cycle. The richest and most powerful whites refuse to give blacks truly “equal” rights, humiliating them as Walter was humiliated, ignoring the evidence and keeping them in prison. prison when they don't necessarily belong there. For-profit prisons help make whites richer and keep blacks poor, so that the African-American community has little chance of breaking the cycle of whites who continue to subjugate blacks. Stevenson, a middle-class man and practicing lawyer, also experiences hate crimes based on his race. In his memoirs, Stevenson recounts an experience in which he was held at gunpoint after listening to a song in his car, simply because there had been petty crimes in his life. neighborhood recently. The officers who attempted to arrest Stevenson blatantly broke the law, and although Stevenson knew this due to his legal background, he was too scared to challenge it. Thinking back to the incident the next day, Stevenson comments that I was a twenty-eight-year-old lawyer who had worked on police misconduct cases. I had the ability to calmly speak to the officer when he threatened to shoot me. When I thought about what I would do when I was sixteen, or nineteen, or even twenty-four, I was afraid to realize that I might run away. The more I thought about it, the more I worried about all the young black boys and men in that neighborhood..