Punishment, Prison, & Necessary Changes
- January 27th, 2020
- in Capstone Commentary
by Mackenzi Barrett
In 1992, a hitchhiker killed the man that picked him up. He was sent to prison and then paroled in 2005. In 2011, after earning his baccalaureate degree, Tulane University granted him admission into their law school. His name is Bruce Reilly, and to say that his fellow classmates at Tulane were wary of him would be an understatement, to say the least. However, as a 2011 article by Elie Mystal points out, “what is the point of having a prison system that ever lets people out if those ex-convicts are not to be allowed to try and succeed on the outside? If I am forced to watch Michael Vick prance around every Sunday getting praised and getting rich, why can’t a murderer turn his life around and go to law school?” Although this story may seem shocking, Bruce Reilly’s transformation story is not the first or only of its kind.