1.5 million, that doesn t count those sitting in local jails. how did we get here? be dpr it s important to acknowledge that throughout most of the 20th century, we were pretty stable. that number remain ed under 250,000. then in the 1970s, i think we were captured by what i call the politics of fear and anger. elected officials began using rhetoric of fear and anger and directing it toward people who were drug addicted and drug dependent and instead of saying that people addicted and dependent need our health care system to respond, that s a health issue, we said that s a criminal justice issue. we declared this misguided war on drugs and put hundreds of thousands of people in jails and prisons for drug-related offenses. but here s the rub. you look at big cities across america. crime rates have gone down. people will say lock them up, boom, crime drops. actually, it s not true that
let s talk about the first step law. we just heard the idea that probation, that s one policy that people are talking about rugt now, but another is is this idea of early release for those convict ed of nonviolent criminl offenses. has it gone far enough? it s a good step. it s a first step. it s a culmination of a lot of discussions people have been having on these issues for years i m hopeful it s the beginning of discussions. if you want to want to deal with the problems of mass incarceration, you have to deal with keeping people out of prison in the first place. once they are here, we have to recognize that we hahat we have untapped human capital and give people true opportunities to earn the credits to come home early and once they earn those credits or win leniency is, give them a meaningful path to truly come home. we should point out, first step act only affects prisoners. that s a small piece of the pie. what s happening on the state