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Reviewed by Grant Leishman for Readers' Favorite
Justice Rules by Janet Sierzant is a deeply nuanced look at the criminal justice system in America and the unequal treatment of women offenders within it. Justine Morgan had made some bad decisions in her young life but by far the worst of those was to fall in love with a charming man who would ultimately lead her into a world of trouble and crime. A law student at university, Justine was heading toward her desired goal of becoming a lawyer when Carl sat down beside her one day in her statistics class. Love and naiveté allowed Justine to meekly surrender her dreams, drop out, and blindly follow Carl wherever he commanded. When Carl and an accomplice pull off an armed robbery, she finds herself unwittingly driving the getaway car. Tried as an accomplice to armed robbery, Justine quickly finds herself incarcerated in federal prison for five years. Bewildered and lost, how is a middle-class, privileged, white girl going to survive in the harsh environment of the U.S. Federal prison system?
Justice Rules is a simple story with a relevant underlying message. Author Janet Sierzant has used this narrative to starkly outline and highlight the many inconsistencies and inherent biases against women in the criminal justice system in America. Justine was someone who didn’t naturally conform to the characterization of many of her co-inmates and she highlights these inconsistencies and the institutionalized sexism inherent in the system. Well-educated and from a loving home, she differed starkly from the many women she would meet and ultimately empathize with inside. The fact that the prison had a warden who genuinely cared about rehabilitation and was prepared to help Justine make small differences in these women’s lives was paramount to her achieving anything. I appreciated that, for Justine, this experience changed her life fundamentally and she was inspired to commit her professional future to helping women caught in an impossible situation. Perhaps most telling of the injustices was the frequency with which “accomplices,” usually women, were treated with more harshness, especially in sentencing, than the men who had committed the crime, as they were often able to bargain for lighter sentences by providing information to authorities. This is a wonderful example of fiction being used well to highlight inequalities and unfairness in the real world. I highly recommend this excellent read.