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By 2010, Florida had sentenced more than a hundred children to life imprisonment without parole for non-homicide offenses, several of whom were thirteen years old at the time of the crime. All of the youngest condemned children—thirteen or fourteen years of age—were black or Latino. Florida had the largest population in the world of children condemned to die in prison for non-homicides.
–Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
A horrible shame. This country has ppt on get its act together on this!
I fully agree! It’s shameful, immoral and of no value to society at all.
I just don’t understand how anyone could even consider doing something like that to a child.
I have read this book, and I absolutely adored it. Adored, and abhorred the subject matter both. I wish I could say I find it hard to understand how a country that is supposedly so enlightened could do this to anyone, let alone a child, but unfortunately I am quite jaded and do not find it as hard to believe as I would like!
I also love this book. It’s one of a few books I’ve read that gave me the words to describe what I already knew. When he said “the opposite of poverty is justice” (both in the book and during his TED talk) all I could think was: FINALLY, someone actually came out and SAID that!
This book also made me angry because the things described should never happen anywhere – and I was not surprised (at all) that they happened. I don’t know what made me angrier, the horrible experiences people were forced to live through or the fact that I was not-shocked-with-surprise by the fact that they occurred.
Mixing the jadedness of experience with the hope for better that is so necessary to survival makes for some strange emotional reactions.
Technically, I am no longer ‘poor’ so…I guess…these kinds of reactions are supposed to go away. I’m not supposed to be jaded anymore. I’m supposed to ‘get over it.’ That’s what people tell me anyway.
(shrug)
Oh well.