Question

Read the excerpt from Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson.

It is about how easily we condemn people in this country and the injustice we create when we allow fear, anger, and distance to shape the way we treat the most vulnerable among us. It’s also about a dramatic period in our recent history, a period that indelibly marked the lives of millions of Americans—of all races, ages, and sexes—and the American psyche as a whole.

. . . Today we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The prison population has increased from 300,000 people in the early 1970s to 2.3 million people today. There are nearly six million people on probation or on parole. One in every fifteen people born in the United States in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison; one in every three black male babies born in this century is expected to be incarcerated.

Pauline is annotating this passage. She is looking for evidence to support the author’s claim that some groups of people are more likely to be imprisoned than others. Which sentence should she underline?

“It is about how easily we condemn people in this country and the injustice we create when we allow fear, anger, and distance to shape the way we treat the most vulnerable among us.”
“Today we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world.”
“The prison population has increased from 300,000 people in the early 1970s to 2.3 million people today.”
“One in every fifteen people born in the United States in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison; one in every three black male babies born in this century is expected to be incarcerated.

Answer 1

“One in every fifteen people born in the United States in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison; one in every three black male babies born in this century is expected to be incarcerated.”

This sentence directly shows a disparity between the general population and black male babies, supporting the claim that some groups are more likely to be imprisoned.