Bryan Stevenson

He said, I finished the book that you sent me, and you have to come and see me.

I said, I don't even remember what book I sent you.

And then he told me that he had just finished reading The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, my favorite book in college.

It was a book that just changed my thinking.

And when he started talking excitedly about all of the things he wanted to discuss that he read in this book,

It just moved me so much.

And here I was talking to someone who people think is beyond redemption, beyond hope, beyond restoration.

And he's talking about how much he loves the characters in this book who are constantly being compassionate, who are navigating difficulty.

And I think that's the gift of believing that we can become better.

Yeah, I think one of the most tragic things that's happened over the last half century is this false idea that some children aren't children.

And it was spread by criminologists and a lot of policy people in the 1980s who were going around arguing

that some kids look like kids and sound like kids.

They said, but these aren't children.

And they actually came up with this term.

They said, these are, quote, super predators.

And that label was applied to a lot of children.

And we started doing very unhealthy things.

We created pipelines from schoolhouses to jailhouses.

We started lowering the minimum age for trying children.

As adults, we created this zero tolerance mindset.