The Criminal Justice System Needs Improvement
In 1981, Habe Lawson wrote to Dianne Tramutola-Lawson - a criminal justice activist - from prison, asking for her help. He had been convicted of a murder he didn’t commit in 1973. Dianne wrote back to him, then eventually started to visit him regularly. They got married by proxy in 1982. In 2001, the prison released Lawson to a halfway house, where he spent sixteen months before going home. After his homecoming, and up until his death in 2016, he mentored other recently released inmates. Tramutola-Lawson describes him as a very warm, loving person who did not deserve to be in jail for almost thirty years. Tramutola-Lawson thinks that the criminal justice system extends excessively long sentences. She believes that the maximum sentence should be for 20 years (except in outstanding cases), and that the system should do a better job in helping prisoners reintegrate into society. She says that “People are just people, they make mistakes.” Many people believe that the