Titiwoot Weerawong/Vecteezy
Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that the key word in the phrase “criminal justice system” is not “justice” nor even “criminal” but “system.” It is the system that drives predatory policing, wrongful convictions, excessive punishment, and runaway recidivism, and that regularly botches opportunities for healing and enhancing public safety.
And never have the failings of the system been more insightfully cataloged than in Emily Galvin Almanza’s new book, The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, a Violent System, and a Public Defender’s Search for Justice in America.
A former public defender, Galvin Almanza co-founded and now heads Partners for Justice, a group that seeks to empower public defenders to advocate for better ways of doing things. She draws deeply on her own experience, having seen the justice system at some of its worst moments.
One of her young clients, she relates, was beaten bloody by a school police officer, who faced no consequences. Another was charged with assault and resisting, “apparently for resisting a fist with his face”; the officer’s only injury was “a sprained wrist on his punching hand.”
The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, a Violent System, and a Public Defender’s Search for Justice in America
By Emily Galvin Almanza
Crown, 384 pages
Publication date: February 17, 2026
In the real world that public defenders inhabit, people regularly get convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. They are conned into making false confessions by the use of police interrogation techniques that are designed to get confessions and not the truth. Unjust results cannot be undone because the system prioritizes finality over accuracy. Vast racial disparities and different rules for people with money are everywhere in evidence.
The Price of Mercy exposes the system’s failings, including its fickleness. It cites studies showing that judges who are up for re-election deliver significantly harsher sentences. So do juvenile court judges whose favorite sports team has just lost a big game. (The good news: One study showed judges are more lenient after they take a break or eat lunch.)
Galvin Almanza argues that public defenders, who represent roughly 80 percent of those caught up in the criminal court system, understand as well as anyone how it tears up people’s lives. She tells of one client charged with a misdemeanor who had to come to court sixteen times over nearly two years, all of which involved taking time off work and arranging child care and transportation. And yet public defenders remain underfunded, and their ideas for how to improve things are often ignored.
Crown
A substantial portion of The Price of Mercy is dedicated to offering solutions, and some seem simpler than others. For instance, the courts ought to stop allowing witnesses to present junk science of the sort that plays a role in about half of all wrongful conviction cases. They ought to reduce the barriers for overturning mistakes. As Galvin Almanza puts it, “We have to stop letting courts stuff their fingers in their ears and yell nyah nyah nyah when asked to take another look at a potential wrongful conviction.”
Other suggested solutions include having someone other than police—like trained mental health counselors—respond to certain situations; stop packing local jails with people who can’t afford bail; facilitate rather than impede the reintegration into communities of former prisoners; make treatment available and affordable for incarcerated people; and increase the use of diversion programs and restorative justice. There is even evidence from several quarters that planting trees in urban areas reduces crime. Galvin Almanza quips, “If you want to be safer both inside and outside your house, your dollars may be better spent on a nice row of maples instead of more cops.”
The good news, according to The Price of Mercy, is that there is no need to seek out elusive solutions. The positive impact of often simple changes has been amply documented. What’s needed is “the political will to overcome resistance to change.” The demand for this change “has to arise from each of us, from our voices and our votes, demanding better.”
Sounds like a plan.