This section of Just Mercy was one story after another about injustice in our system. A part that really stood out to me was the section about children and how they get put into the adult system for life for a crime they committed when they were younger. States were under the impression that children “have absolutely no respect for human life”( Stevenson 159) and that the children needed to be exposed to the adult justice system.
“[t]here is no evidence that young people involved in violence during the peak years of the early 1990s were more frequent or more vicious offenders than youths in earlier years.”
(159-160)
The State continued to sentence kids who committed crimes when they were teenagers to life in prison. While reading through this chapter, a common theme in the kids was the poor living conditions they grew up in. Also, how the crimes they committed was not a reflection of their character but of their background and prior living conditions. This quote also explains how the State and other law enforcement agencies won’t willingly look into evidence to prove the case otherwise. They just want to have the cases done and over with, which, in turn, can screw over the wrongly or cruelly punished.
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