Walter Dean Myer's Monster

132 Words1 Page

Walter Dean Myer’s book Monster depicts how the American legal system functions. The primary theme of the story is to examine how a person who commits a crime is arrested, convicted, tried, and punished. This book looks at the legal system through the eyes of a young, African American teenager. He paints horrible images of life in jail (but keep in mind… this is a detention center or equivalent to juvenile hall, not the state or federal penitentiary). Further, Myers brings to point that everyone who is sentences to this facility is to be punished, whether they are guilty or innocent. By the end of the story, Steve has a different outlook… things are typically not as bad as you initially think they are… it is all in how you view things.

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Locking Up Our Own By James Forman

    600 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the excerpt reading from Locking Up Our Own, the author, James Forman Jr., spoke about the issue our society has faced recently with mass incarceration of African-American males. He also talks about his own past experience with the situation through being a public defender. He had previously worked under Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and decided that he wanted to defend low-income individuals who were charged with crimes in Washington, D.C. Forman detailed a few specific cases he had working with young, African-American males and retold his reactions to some of the convictions.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of When A Heart Turns Solid Rock By Timothy Black

    1057 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to Stephen B. Bright, many of the men, women, and children sent to prison in the United States everyday, are processed through courts without legal representation that is indispensable to a fair trial, a reliable verdict and a just sentence. We see many examples of this everyday. “A poor person arrested by police may languish in jail for days, weeks or months before seeing a lawyer for the first time” (Bright 6). Once convicted a poor person can face years in prison, or even be executed without ever having a lawyer present. The concepts of crime can be defined differently in different societies and can be classified according to race ethnic, gender, sexuality class, and religious identifications (Bright 6). Common targets of this “poverty-to-prison” cycle can be seen in When a Heart Turns Solid Rock by Timothy Black. The book shows how schools, jobs, the streets, and prisons have shaped the lives and choices of poor Puerto Rican boys at the turn of the twenty- first century. Rather than using a model of urban poverty that blame the poor for their poverty, Black instead focuses, through ethnography, on the social forces that affect the individual lives of three urban Puerto Rican brothers: Julio, Fausto, and Sammy. As viewed in the book, many targets for the prison system are poor African American and Latino men. People that come from poor neighborhoods are at a higher risks of being incarcerated.

    Read More

  • Review of Monsters Are Due On Maple Street

    450 Words  | 1 Pages

    ?The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street? is a story about the paranoia of regular people. When the power and phone lines stop working on Maple Street, the residents become hostile. One boy puts an idea into their heads: that aliens impersonating humans have done it. This single thought catalysts and soon all of the neighbors are ready to hurt each other for answers. ?The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street? is a good play to see for all ages.

    Read More

  • Jeff Jacoby’s Bring Flogging Back

    1009 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jacoby uses many claims about how crime in the United States has grown and the how faulty America’s justice system currently is. One claim said that citizens pay around “$30,000 per inmate each year” (Jacoby 197). This grasps the reader’s attention by connecting their life to the problem; it is their money, a lot of their money, being used to imprison these criminals. The rates have increased on inmates since the 1980s by over 250% (Jacoby 197). Jacoby declares that the prison system is terrible; he uses accurate and persuading evidence.

    Read More

  • Alternative Criminal Justice, And Restorative Justice: Not Real Alternatives

    3375 Words  | 7 Pages

    The current criminal justice system is expensive to maintain. In North America the cost to house one prisoner is upwards of eighty to two hundred dollars a day (Morris, 2000). The bulk of this is devoted to paying guards and security (Morris, 2000). In contrast with this, community oriented programming as halfway houses cost less than the prison alternative. Community programming costs five to twenty five dollars a day, and halfway houses although more expensive than community programs still remain cheaper than prison (Morris, 2000). Tabibi (2015c) states that approximately ninety percent of those housed in prison are non-violent offenders. The treatment of offenders in the current system is understood to be unjust. By this, Morris (2000) explains that we consistently see an overrepresentation of indigenous and black people in the penal system. Corporate crimes are largely omitted, while street crimes are emphasized (Morris, 2000). This disproportionately targets marginalized populations (homeless, drug addicted and the poor) (Tabibi, 2015c). The current system is immoral in that the caging of people is highly depersonalized and troubling (Tabibi, 2015c). This is considered to be a barbaric practice of the past, however it is still frequently used in North America (Morris, 2000). Another moral consideration is with the labelling of youth as offenders in the criminal justice system (Morris, 2000). Morris (2000) argues that we should see youth crimes as a social failure, not as an individual level failure. Next, Morris (2000) classifies prisons as a failure. Recidivism rates are consistently higher for prisons than for other alternatives (Morris, 2000). The reason for this is that prisons breed crime. A school for crime is created when a person is removed from society and labeled; they become isolated, angry

    Read More

  • Pride and Guilt in Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, and Devils

    2960 Words  | 6 Pages

    ---. Crime and Punishment. Trans. Jessie Coulson. Ed. George Gibian. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1989.

    Read More

  • James Dashner's Maze Runner

    926 Words  | 2 Pages

    Hey you, Yeah… YOU! Would you want to live in a society where you live in a box for your entire life, and mean absolutely nothing to the just about anyone? For science right? NOPE! Obviously, Societies fall as a result of a corrupt government, Failing Social Structure, and Sickness. It is due to these factors that many great societies such as Greece, Rome, and the society depicted in the book Maze Runner fall.

    Read More

  • Race to Incarcerate

    1569 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mass incarceration has caused the prison’s populations to increase dramatically. The reason for this increase in population is because of the sentencing policies that put a lot of men and women in prison for an unjust amount of time. The prison population has be caused by periods of high crime rates, by the medias assembly line approach to the production of news stories that bend the truth of the crimes, and by political figures preying on citizens fear. For example, this fear can be seen in “Richard Nixon’s famous campaign call for “law and order” spoke to those fears, hostilities, and racist underpinnings” (Mauer pg. 52). This causes law enforcement to focus on crimes that involve violent crimes/offenders. Such as, gang members, drive by shootings, drug dealers, and serial killers. Instead of our law agencies focusing their attention on the fundamental causes of crime. Such as, why these crimes are committed, the family, and preventive services. These agencies choose to fight crime by establishing a “War On Drugs” and with “Get Tough” sentencing policies. These policies include “three strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and juvenile waives laws which allows kids to be trialed as adults.

    Read More

  • Raw Brett Dalton Character Analysis

    931 Words  | 2 Pages

    The legal system is a procedure for interpreting and enforcing the law. It is a set of laws that all communities in civilisation must obey. The penal system is a method where people are punished for violating the legal system. The book "Raw" is about a young sixteen-year-old born trouble maker, Brett Anthony Dalton. He is a recidivist and has no respect for the community and the law. An example of this, is said by the Magistrate, "Make no mistake, Brett,' she warned before the cops dragged him out back into a holding cell, ‘this is your last chance. If you end up in another court ---- it's jail." (Page 4). Consequently, Brett's punishment was a 3-month sentence at a low detention security centre called "The Farm", which was owned and ran by Sam and Mary Fraser. "Like every juvenile detention centre, it aimed to turn troublemakers like himself into model citizens. Brett snorted. As if." (Page 3). Throughout this essay, I will discuss the points regarding Brett Dalton's positive transformation whilst at "The Farm". Therefore, the penal and legal systems have given Brett the opportunity to change his life.

    Read More

  • Children In Edward Hume's No Matter How Loud I Shout

    985 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Edward Humes book, No Matter How Loud I Shout, he discusses the different areas of the Juvenile Justice System, and how those areas affect delinquents who have made their way into the Los Angeles court houses. He recounts his experiences with these children in Los Angeles while they are in Juvenile Court, as well as telling their stories of before they entered the system (Humes, 2015). Furthermore, Humes recounts how these individuals moved through the court system based off their time done, and other factors. Humes relates the stories the kids have written in his class within the jailing facility, as a demonstration of the different back grounds that the children came from. They all grew up differently, and that has affected how they commit

    Read More

  • Monster By Walter Dean Myers Summary

    595 Words  | 2 Pages

    You are on trial and your life depends on it. You and your lawyer have argued and proved that you are innocent, but the verdict is still unknown. You are told a verdict is in and your heart is racing. The judge then says you are... In the story Monster by Walter Dean Myers, is a young adult named Steve Harmon—the protagonist—is being accused of felony murder. The story is written both in first person and as a screenplay. Myers uses unique characters and settings to make the reader feel like they are in the same situation as Harmon. The majority of the story takes place in the courtroom where Harmon and his lawyer are fighting for his life. The novel also takes place in a jail and can really show the horrors of what happens there and what is

    Read More

  • Super-Predator Theory And The Criminal Justice System

    504 Words  | 2 Pages

    The United States is home to 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners. Also, African Americans are incarcerated five times more likely than White Americans. During the 1990s, black kids from rough neighborhoods were deemed as “super-predators”, kids who have no remorse, conscience, and respect for human life. The super-predator theory has been very effective in putting little kids in jail. Therefore, the super-predator theory has extremely negatively impacted the criminal justice system by contributing to wrongful conviction of youths and eliminating mitigating factors.

    Read More

  • Mass Incarceration Essay

    754 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to the Oxford Index, “whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, or hyper incarceration, this phenomenon refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.” It should be noted that there is much ambiguity in the scholarly definition of the newly controversial social welfare issue as well as a specific determination in regards to the causes and consequences to American society. While some pro arguments cry act as a crime prevention technique, especially in the scope of the “war on drugs’.

    Read More

  • The Inmate Subculture in United States Prisons: An Overview

    1773 Words  | 4 Pages

    Taylor, D. L., & Palacious, W. R. (2002). The Inmate Subculture in Juvenile Settings. In R. L. Gido, & T. Allemen (Eds.), Turnstyle Justice: Issues in American Corrections (pp. 60-61; Tables 5.2, 5.3). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Jeff Jhonson.

    Read More

  • Life Behind Bars

    1158 Words  | 3 Pages

    From prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world, costing the country billions each year to operate. Creating a booming business for the entertainment industry to convey prison life through films, documentaries, and TV shows, Beyond Scared Straight, Jail, and American’s Hardest Prisons are a few. Allowing citizens to utilize their imagination to envision what it would be like ripped of all dignity and locked up to inhabit a six by eight center-block cell for an extended period of time. However how accurate are films, TV shows, and documentaries of life behind bars? Hollywood’s take on prison life is often inaccurate using obscured facts to display daily life and various experiences of prisoners for its audience. Creating a misassumption of prison and its inmates to citizens within the U.S. Literacy works, regarding actual accounts of inmate experiences that either an inmate wrote or outsourced to an author similar to A Life for a Life contain more detailed and authentic material. Insight of food consumption, violence, sexual encounters, corrupt guards, and health care are various topics exaggerated in films such as, Animal Factory which the books, journals, and biographies like A Life for a Life adequately convey in greater detail to help an individual create a better understanding of the actual realities of life behind bars. By comparing the two, Animal Factory and A Life for a Life, an individual can correct any false assumptions they may have regarding prison life.

    Read More

More about Walter Dean Myer's Monster

Open Document