![]() The narrative backbone is the story of Walter McMillian, a young black man falsely accused of murdering a white woman in the small southern town where To Kill a Mockingbird is set. Stevenson animates these harrowing statistics with stories from his years as a criminal defense lawyer, personalizing the political through a powerful series of cases. The War on Drugs and “Tough on Crime” policing policies disproportionately target juveniles, women, people of color, the poor, and individuals with mental health issues, all too often the victims of inflated sentences and wrongful convictions resulting in the death penalty. Of those incarcerated, 58 percent identify as Black or Hispanic. prison population increased from 300,000 to 2,300,000 – the highest incarceration rate in the world. Between the 1970s and 2014, when Stevenson’s memoir was published, the U.S. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |