Corruption In The Book 'Just Mercy'

Being forced into an airless prison without any room for your voice to be heard is a nightmare the Justice System holds over those who are unfairly represented. “Just Mercy,” a true story that showcases the ruthlessness of people in power who have wrecked the Justice System. Walter McMillan is part of an extensive percentage of innocent individuals who were convicted for crimes they never committed. The Justice System will give unbiased justice when people are given proper advocacy, corrupt officials are replaced and systematic disparities are eliminated.

Justice without real advocacy for an individual does not demonstrate true equity the system says it does. Instances where the accused receive punishment without someone to advocate for them,

Reforming the Justice System is futile when people refuse to follow the principle laid out in the title. In the book “Just Mercy,” “Sheriff Tate drove Walter to Holman Correctional Facility, a short ride away in Atmore, Alabama. Before the trip, the sheriff again threatened Walter with racial slurs and terrifying plans.” which shows how officials of the criminal abuse their power to intimidate the accused into potentially serving a sentence without question due to fear. From start to finish, there were many instances in “Just Mercy” where officials like the judge or the sheriff abused their power to instill fear and make the people they uphold authority over feel inferior and lesser than human. The abuse of power that sheriff Tom Tate illustrated in Walter McMillan’s case is not the first and also not the last time someone with the same false sense of justice will convict minorities, people of lower economic status, and as was said before, people they view as lower than them. Addressing and fixing the problem many officials bring into the Justice System would be to appoint new individuals to represent equity within the system. In the United States now, the bar is set low when comes to hiring people with the correct morality for the job. As an example, judge Robert E Lee Key was given the opportunity to convict numerous people and give them a sentence they did not deserve;

The system that is meant to be equal represents a gap between people viewed as superior and imfeorior. From Marc Mauer’s, “Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System Need to Be Addressed” article, a statistic “In 2005, African Americans represented 14 percent of current drug users, yet they constituted 33.9 percent of persons arrested for a drug offense and 53 percent of persons sentenced to prison for a drug offense.” this confirms that the many arrests that do not correspond with the percentage that actually commit the crimes are unfairly convicted. Like this statistic, the active one actually participating in these crimes are not caught and convicted but the people who are, are minorities or poverty stricken individuals are profiled for crimes they never committed due to fitting the picture of people who carry out those crimes. Instead of decreasing the number of crimes like drug use, the Justice System fails to apprehend people who have issues with drug use which further increases the frequency of the crime. Bringing attention to the unfair disparage-ridden system, it is known that racial minorities like African Americans or Latinos are condemned more than Caucasians hence the dispoportionate number of the innocent outweighing the number of those guilty of the crime. The correction of the oppressive imbalanced system leaves room for a new unbiased