Bryan Stevenson

Until the 1970s, we had a relatively small number of people in jails and prisons.

It was fewer than 300,000 people in jails and prisons in this country.

And then that shifted radically in the 1970s when elected officials from all political parties began arguing that

that people who are drug addicted or drug dependent are criminals who should be punished for their addiction and dependency.

And we were angry and we were afraid.

And so we put hundreds of thousands of people in jails and prisons for addiction and dependency.

Now, if we weren't being governed by fear and anger, we would have said, oh no, those people suffering from addiction and dependency, they have a health problem.

And we need a healthcare response, not a punitive response.

But we didn't do that.

And now we have...

Two million people in our jails and prisons.

We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

We've destroyed so many communities, so many families, and we still have one of the highest rates of opioid addiction in the world.

We still have families devastated by drug overdose and all the violence and dysfunction that addiction can create.

And we haven't helped families.

We haven't helped children and mothers recover from

We've just punished people.

But it was rooted in this fear and anger.

And that's what has shaped so much of our thinking about putting kids in adult jails and prisons.

And it's tragic.