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Pilsen Community Books welcomes Emily Galvin Almanza and Aislinn Pulley to the store for a discussion of Galvin Almanza's new book "The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, a Violent System, and a Public Defender's Search for Justice in America." This event is cosponsored by the MacArthur Justice Center.

“A searing, compassionate, and utterly necessary book that pulls back the curtain with the clarity of a lawyer and the heart of someone who’s seen the criminal legal system’s devastating consequences up close.”—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

As Americans, we are told a rose-tinted story about our criminal courts—that these are the hallowed halls of justice, that the purpose of our legal process is to find the truth, and that those who enforce the law are both equitable and heroic. But what if the reality is purposefully obscured to hide something rotten at the system’s core?

In The Price of Mercy, attorney and former public defender Emily Galvin Almanza weaves hard data and unforgettable stories, dark humor and compelling evidence to tell us the truth about what’s really going on behind the closed doors of America’s criminal courts. She shows us how jails actually increase future crime, the dirty tricks police use to make millions in overtime pay, how a man could spend decades in prison because scientists mistook dog hair for his own, the perverse incentives that push prosecutors to seek convictions even when they themselves don’t want to, and how judges may decide cases differently after lunch.

We’ll learn what’s working, too: how public defenders can improve public health and even economic mobility, and how planting more trees can reduce a neighborhood’s murder rates. But a lone defender winning a case won’t change the system. Galvin Almanza argues that we need an engaged public to confront the stark reality of our crime-generating, poverty-entrenching, health-destroying legal apparatus and rebuild it into something that can save our collective present and prevent our future from being torn apart.

Provocative and eye-opening, The Price of Mercy lifts the curtain on the way our laws really operate and presents a path forward for true transformation of the American criminal court system. Justice, and the law itself, is not some static thing. It is something enacted together, decision by decision, in acts of inhumanity or mercy.

Emily Galvin Almanza is the co-founder and executive director of Partners for Justice, a nonprofit creating a new collaborative model of public defense designed to empower defenders nationwide. Prior to founding PFJ, Emily fought for clients inside the L.A. County Public Defender’s Office, the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office, and the Bronx Defenders, and with the Stanford Three Strikes Project. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Teen Vogue, and Time, among other publications.

Aislinn Pulley is the Executive Director at the Chicago Torture Justice Center, and a long-time organizer who has worked on a variety of campaigns, including the Reparations Now movement to pass the historic 2015 Reparations Ordinance for survivors of CPD torture. Born and raised in Chicago, Aislinn founded the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter as part of the Freedom Ride to Ferguson in August 2014 and was the youngest founding member of the cultural non-profit that used art for social change, Insight Arts. She is the founder and creator of urban youth magazine, Underground Philosophy as well as a founder of the young women’s performance ensemble dedicated to ending sexual assault, Visibility Now.

The MacArthur Justice Center’s National Parole Transformation Project (NPTP) is a coordinated campaign that aims to challenge existing systems that violate people's rights and transform parole into a tool for decarceration. Through collaboration with a growing network of advocates, lawyers and systems-impacted individuals, NPTP develops and supports local and national efforts to end the expansion of carceral systems of post-conviction supervision across the country.