Bryan Stevenson

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.

I write in the book about meeting one of my clients who was

14, living in a household where his mother had a boyfriend and when he would start drinking he'd get violent and one day he came home and he walked into the kitchen and punched the boy's mother and she just fell.

She didn't even say anything, he just punched her.

She ended up on the floor bleeding and unconscious.

Her son came running into the kitchen to try to help his mom, but she was non-responsive and that little boy thought his mom was dead.

She wasn't dead, but he thought she was dead.

After 10 minutes, he got up to go into the bedroom to call the police.

And then he remembered that this man kept a handgun in the dresser drawer.