Cyntoia Brown and how the U.S. criminal justice system fails black women and girls

At the age of 16, Cyntonia Brown was charged as an adult and convicted of crimes including premeditated first-degree murder.  After spending fifteen years of a 51-year sentence in Tennessee prisons, she was granted clemency by former Governor of Tennessee Bill Haslam.  This article considers the interplay of multiple social issues at play in Ms. Brown’s case and challenges the reader to recognize that her clemency was not the result of a successful and effective criminal justice system.