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DEI Common Read "Just Mercy" Resource Guide

This guide was created to provide resources to faculty, staff, and students that will enhance and support the reading of the DEI Common Read book "Just Mercy". Direct comments to Stacy Arth, sarth@nvcc.edu.

Do Your Own Research

This guide provides links to a small number of resources available through NOVA Libraries and to well known organizations doing work related to topics referenced by Bryan Stevenson in his book, Just Mercy.

As with any question you're trying to answer, though, don't just look at the resources provided here. Do your own research - through Google, through NOVA Library databases and catalog, and any other search engines you have access to.

Try some of the following keywords in various combinations to find more sources.

  • carceral system
  • criminal justice system
  • imprisonment
  • death penalty
  • solitary confinement
  • death row
  • wrongful conviction
  • exoneration
  • psychological impact
  • race OR racism 
  • witness testimony
  • presumption of guilt
  • mental disability
  • intellectual disability
  • mental health
  • misconduct
  • poverty
  • reform
  • excessive punishment

Databases

Criminal Justice Resources

On this page you'll find resources related to the topics discussed and referenced in Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy. Use these and other sources to learn more about the American carceral (prison) system, racial injustice within the criminal justice system, and how individuals and organizations like the Equal Justice Initiative are working to provide representation and fair access to services to as many people as possible.

Online books

The cover is a photograph of a dark room with a door cracked open enough for a bright light to shine through.
Ttilte on a yellow background with vertical lines like prison bars going across the cover.
The title words are in orange against a black background.
The cover is the a close up the painting called The Last Judgement, an Italian fresco painting depicting a man and a woman surrounded by a semi-circle of people casting judgement upon them.
The cover is a photograph of the inside of a prison. There is a central circular guard area and the surrounding cells all around it.

Print Books

The cover features a bronze statue of a blindfolded Lady Justice holding her scales up in front of her.
The cover is red with a spiral made of barbed wire int he center.
The cover features a picture of a group of policeman from the New York Police Department, two of which are detaing an African-American man who is in visible distress.
The cover is a photograph of nine African American young men standing in front of a jail cell gflanked by two guards on either side. One young man is seated next to another man who looks like a lawyer possibly who is showing him something he is writing on a piece of paper.
The cover features a drawing of a prison cell door.

Journals

The following are links to scholarly, peer reviewed journals whose scope (what they publish research about) is criminal justice and the criminal justice system. These links go to journal with content available through NOVA Libraries and are not the only journals providing research related to the topics in Just Mercy. Sociology, political science, and law journals are also places to find sources on related topics.

Organizations

Disclaimer

Web content through NOVA Libraries, including links to external content, does not necessarily reflect the opinions or values of Northern Virginia Community College, the Virginia Community College System, or the Virginia State Board for Community Colleges, which do not endorse and are not responsible or liable for any such content. 

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