Resources for Faculty
Here are supplemental articles/ videos that touch on the themes in Just Mercy:
Gavilan College Library Guide
Teacher's Guides and sample lesson plans:
- Class Assignments
- Book Rags Just Mercy Lesson Plan
- Northern Arizona University Chapter Map
- Discussion Questions - Berry College
- Discussion Questions - Random House
- Discussion Questions - U Madison
- Random House Teacher's Guide
Bryan Stevenson:
- Stories of Just Mercy
- Bryan Stevenson - Biography
- Bryan Stevenson TED Talk: We need to talk about an injustice (video)
- One Lawyer's fight for Blacks and 'Just Mercy' - Fresh Air with Terry Gross (with link to audio)
- Slavery to Mass Incarceration, an Equal Justice Initiative Video
- Bryan Stevenson on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah - (video)
- Bryan Stevenson on the Jon Stewart Show (video)
- Bryan Stevenson on The Colbert Report (video)
- Cruel and Unusual: Sentencing 13 and 14 year old children to die in prison (Video)
- Children in Prison - Equal Justice Initiative
- Mass Incarceration - Equal Justice Initiative
- Death Penalty - Equal Justice Initiative
- The Legacy of Racial Terror - New Yorker Magazine Podcast (Audio)
- The Legacy of Lynching, on Death Row - The New Yorker
Solutions:
- Four Prisons in California to get Community College Programs - LA Times
- After Homelessness and Jail, a Harlem Woman Finds Stability Working Construction - New York Times
- Cook County (IL) Sheriff - The System Doesn't Make Sense (Video part 1 and Part 2)
- Formerly Incarcerated activist leads movement toward decarceration - Truth-out.org
- Scholarship, Mentor Program Helps Children of Incarcerated Parents Go to College - Truth-out.org
Death Penalty:
- Broken Beyond Repair (about the death penalty and the justice system) - New York Times OpEd 2010
- Where the Death Penalty Still Lives - New York Times Magazine
- Death Penalty - Equal Justice Initiative
- Death of the Death Penalty - Time Magazine
- The Legacy of Lynching, on Death Row - The New Yorker
Art:
- Wrongfully Convicted Artist Finishes Grad School in an Orange Jumpsuit - Huffington Post
- Strange Fruit - sung by Billie Holiday,YouTube
Science:
- How Brain Science is Changing How Long Teens Spend in Prison - Frontline Article
- America's Largest Mental Hospital is a jail - The Atlantic
Education:
- Four Prisons in California to get Community College Programs - LA Times
- College Classes in Maximum Security - All Things Considered (with audio clip embedded)
- Juvenile Education: Inside a confined World - PBS Newshour (video)
- Education and Vo-Tech training in prisons reduces recidivism - RAND Corporation
- Scholarship, Mentor Program Helps Children of Incarcerated Parents Go to College- Truth-out.org
- After 22-Year Ban, Pilot PELL Program for Incarcerated Students Kicks Off - Truth-out.org
Cast of Characters:
- An Interview with Walter McMillian - 60 Minutes
- People From Just Mercy
Mass Incarceration:
- Mass Incarceration - Equal Justice Initiative
- Mass Incarceration - The Atlantic (video)
- Angola For Life: Rehabilitation and Reform in a Louisiana State Penitentiary - The Atlantic (Video)
- From Slavery to Mass Incarceration, an Interview with the movie '13th' director Ava DuVernay - Democracy Now (Video)
- Incarceration Nation - Bill Moyers (Video - 2 parts)
Racism/ Segregation:
- Unearthing a Riot - Tulsa OK riot of 1921
- Black Men's Sentences 20% Longer than White Men's for Similar Crimes - Huffington Post
- The Black Family in the Age of Incarceration - The Atlantic
- What Privilege Really Means - Every Day Feminism.com
- Young Latino Males - An American Dilemma, Inequities for Latinos in Criminal Justice - Cronkite E-zine
- How Social Bias can Transfer from One Generation to the Next - KQED
- Black People More Likely to be Wrongly Convicted of Murder - New York Times
- White Inheritance is Key Driver in Racial Wealth Gap - Channel 3000.com
- Separate and Unequal (school segregation and poor neighborhoods) - New York Times OpEd 2011
- Children Caught in a Racist System - New York Times OpEd 2015
- Angola For Life: Rehabilitation and Reform in a Louisiana State Penitentiary - The Atlantic (Video)
- From Slavery to Mass Incarceration, an Interview with the movie '13th' director Ava DuVernay - Democracy Now (Video)
- White Fragility: Why it's So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism - The Good Men Project
- School Segregation, the Continuing Tragedy of Ferguson - ProPublica.org
- Let Black Kids Just Be Kids - New York Times
Juvenile Incarceration:
- The Black Family in the Age of Incarceration - The Atlantic
- Too Long Ignored (conditions of life for young black and Latino males) - New York Times OpEd
- Children Caught in a Racist System - New York Times OpEd 2015
- Second Chance Kids - Frontline, May 2, 1017 (Video)
- How Brain Science is Changing How Long Teens Spend in Prison - Frontline Article
- They were sentenced as Superpredators. Who were they really? - Frontline Article
- Cruel and Unusual: Sentencing 13 and 14 year old children to die in prison (Video)
- Juvenile Education: Inside a confined World - PBS Newshour (video)
- Children in Prison - Equal Justice Initiative
- After 22-Year Ban, Pilot PELL Program for Incarcerated Students Kicks Off - Truth-out.org
Wrongful Conviction:
- Wrongfully Convicted Artist Finishes Grad School in an Orange Jumpsuit - Huffington Post
- Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom - a Podcast
Economics:
- Mississippi Jails Are Losing Inmates, And Local Officials Are ‘Devastated’ By The Loss Of Revenue - Huffington Post Economics
For-Profit Prisons:
- Inside Shane Bauer's Gripping Look at the Workings of a Private Prison - Mother Jones
- The Corrections Corporation of AMerica (CCA): By the Numbers - Mother Jones
- CCA's founders tell how First Contract was Obtained - YouTube
- Indictment of ex-official Raises questions on Mississippi's Private Prisons - New York Times
- Privately Run Mississippi Prison, called a Scene of Horror, is Shut Down - New York Times
Misc.
- The War on Drugs is an Epic Fail - Jay Z Video
- The Dangers of a Single Story - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED Talk about the importance of hearing all points of view
- Shakespeare's Torture Test - New York Times