Bryan Stevenson

But we don't have the ability to put crimes in prison.

We can only put people in prison, and people are not crimes.

They can commit crimes, and we could want to hold them accountable for the crimes they've committed, but there's a difference between a person and a crime.

And when we focus on the person, the conversation tends to shift.

We tend to think differently.

A woman who's been abused...

for 20 years and suffered just unimaginable pain and humiliation at the hands of someone who just thought they could do whatever they want, who finally reacts, even violently, is not just a violent offender.

She is someone who is trying to manage decades of abuse and mistreatment.

And if our laws and our policies don't reflect the fact that she is more than that moment of

of violence, that moment of reaction, then we're going to do something unjust.

We're going to put her in prison for life without parole.

We may even sentence her to death.

We have reduced her to this worse act.

I've never represented anybody who was only the crime they've committed.

And that's the difficulty of not being more explicit about this concept that we are all more than the worst thing we've ever done.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I think what's been very gratifying about my work is that I see that play out every day in the clients that I represent.

I represent a lot of children.

And when you are 13 or 14 and you end up being sentenced to life in prison in an adult facility, there's a presumption that you must be awful and irredeemable.