3.5 The author was in law school when she learns her sixteen year old cousin has randomly killed a nine year old boy. Since she was so much older she didn't really know nor have a relationship with her cousin, but she did know he was a honor student. So how did he go from that to being a murderer?

She explores the concept of justice, punishment for youth offenders, the different permutations of heartbreak, mental illness and rehabilitation. Do youth offenders deserve life in prison, despite all the studies on brain development? Death sentences for youth offenders? She strives to understand, and though for the longest time she doesn't go to the prison to see her cousin, she does send him books.
She discusses the Supreme court rulings formed by Roper, Graham, Miller and Montgomery, rulings that might be moving towards something new for youth offenders. Though they aren't implicitly clear and depends on their interpretation by judges.

This book makes one think, question their own views on justice and the implementation of long sentences on youth offenders. Are these throwaway kids, incorrigible, unable to be rehabilitated? ( )

The Uninnocent: Notes on Violence and Mercy by Katharine Blake offers a wide-ranging examination of our society through the focal point of one crime. This crime, murder, happened to have been committed by Blake's young cousin, so this portrait is both intimate and societal in its approach.

I think each reader will have different takeaways from this book, which I believe is a good thing. How close the reader has ever been to a similar situation, the specific areas of interest for a reader of this type of book (legal concepts, mental health, grieving the loss of a child (by death or prison), ethics, and where all of these things can come together in the form of public policy.

In the process of asking and even answering so many questions Blake raises so many more, mostly about what we can do to make our world, our society, better for more people. Is that her primary goal here? I don't think so but I also think she wants to engage as wide a swath of the public as possible so she examines everything with the knowledge that most of the answers will be partial answers at best. Yet that can serve as a starting point for others who might have ideas on improving society.

The other way I read this book, aside from my normal tendency to wonder what we could do better, was as a person's, and by extension a family's, journey through such a traumatic experience. So many times I tried to imagine how I would have felt or what I might have done. But with only a few exceptions I was stymied because our response to most things are filtered through different ways of engaging. What is legally "right?" What does my moral or ethical belief system say? What is my initial gut feeling? And how, as I travel through the various stages I would pass through, are these systems of thought altered by my mental and emotional state? These are questions I came away pondering.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )