When President Nixon declared war on drugs on June 17, 1971, about 110 people per 100,000 in the population were incarcerated. Today, we have 2-3 million prisoners: 743 people per 100,000 in the population. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of its prisoners. As Senator Jim Webb once put it, Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different and vastly counterproductive.
Maia SzalavitzI don't have kids, but I've often noticed when people first become parents they seem to completely forget their own adolescence and they start to, as their kids become teenagers, try to do the things that didn't stop them themselves. And I jokingly frame this as: Your brain gets wiped of those memories when you become a parent.
Maia SzalavitzThe thing we want for all our kids is that they be connected with a learning community and that they have strong social and familial relationships. If we can do whatever we can do to create that and to reduce bullying and to reduce the kind of pain and shame so many kids feel for so many reasons, that stuff is going to reduce drug addiction.
Maia Szalavitz