David R. Dow is an esteemed professor at the University of Houston Law Centre who has dedicated his life to defending death row inmates.
In his 2012 TED speech, he talks not about the ethics of capital punishment, but on where the ideologies of pro-death penalty and anti-death penalty campaigners meet: on the topic of intervention.
“What we’re talking about today is rocket science,” Dow grimly states. It is about reaching into the lives of youths, even, controversially, into their very homes, and guiding them with a firm but caring shoulder off the path that leads to violence and death.
In the seven years following Dow’s talk, executions have seen a slow decrease across America, but remain as prevalent as they were back in the mid-1980s.
Something needs to be done, and the video above provides some potent insight into a potential solution.