Review Wherever I Wind Up by R. A. Dickey For Criminal Justice Class - Book Report/Review Example

Book Review "Wherever I Wind Up by R. A. Dickey" For Criminal Justice Wherever I wind up by R.A Dickey is a raveling story of his personal and professional life. In this book, he entails of how his birth brought about the hasty marriage of his parents doomed to failure. His mother became an alcoholic and his father emotionally unavailable. This state of his family meant that he received none or extremely little attention. Even normally visible tings would go easily unnoticed in his life by his patents.

To this regard, he got molested on several occasions by his babysitter at the age of 8 and then by a teenage boy at around the same age (Dickey and Weeks). Eventually his parents got divorced and while living with his mother got into a series of fights. He, therefore, went to live with his father during which he became extremely good in fastball. This gets him an entry into the University of Tennessee where his life career in baseball begun.The criminal justice system should protect the innocent, punish the guilty and provide safety and confidence to the people.

In this book, Dickeys life as a child is full of events that depict the flaws of the criminal justice system in protecting him. Since birth, his parent’s relationship worsened with time as they became engulfed in their own evils. Eventually they separated, and his mother got custody to their only child, Dickey. This was a move by the justice system which could as well be termed as the contributing factor to his molestation. Under the care of his mother, he gets repeatedly molested by a teenage girl and later on boy.

As an alcoholic, his mother was unstable, a sociopathic and irresponsible and, therefore, should not have had custody in of Dickey in the first place. This is evident in the statement, “One Saturday my mother tells me she is going out that night and leaving…” (Dickey and Coffey 20). It is essential to conduct proper investigations into the nature of lifestyles of both parents before assigning custody of children. In this case, if such had been conducted Dickey would have ended up with his father form the beginning and instances of molestation would never have occurred.

It is also vital to conduct regular follow-ups into the life of a child with separated parents so as to verify the childs safety. In this case, checkups would have been able to identify that Dickey was being molested by the babysitter and prevent the recurrence of the event and of the teenage boy from occurring.R.A Dickey did not speak of his childhood molestation to anybody until he reached an age of 31. The statement “I never tell anyone until I am 31 years old” (Dickey and Coffey 25), shows that throughout his life even as an adult, he still felt fright and self awareness of what had happened.

This depicts a total failure in the part of the justice department in protecting and instilling confidence in its people. If as a child and still as an adult he could not seek help, then whom does the system serve? It is, therefore, critical that the justice system undergoes diversification to reach and adapt to all ages and cultures of people. This will enable children to know their rights and have confidence in the system to speak out. Even the wrong doers would fear to commit such criminal instances.

The system should also be able to prosecute criminals for their past crimes (Dickey and Weeks). This means that even after those many years later that dickey did speak out, the perpetrators should be found and made accountable for their actions.This is a good book with proper representation of the various virtues of life and how they shape a person’s being. Apart from justice and fairness the book does feature other themes such as religion and family values. It is a good social and educative read for sure.

Works CitedDickey, Roberts, and Coffey Wayne. Wherever I wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball. New York: Penguin Group US, 2012. Print.Dickey, Roberts, and Weeks Grier. “How to Fight Child Abuse.” USA Today. 28 Aug. 2012. Web. 1 Dec 2012