. >> civil rights lawyer, brian stevenson, is one of the nation's leading prison reform advocates. >> i think we have hundreds of thousands of people in prison who are not a threat to public safety. >> but is it about safety, or is it about punishment? >> i think we have created a culture that makes it entirely about punishment. >> and you might be surprised who else thinks mass incarceration is a problem, the people who run louisiana's prison system. >> and i think nation-wide, we lockup people too long and too many of them. >> seth smith is the director of operations for louisiana's department of corrections. >> it's not working. it's not giving us the results that we want. it's costing a lot of money. we send people to prison that aren't necessary a danger to society, and then we keep people that their time for danger is over. they're no longer a threat. >> he says it is time to rethink prison from simply punishment to rehabilitation. you say it is about rehabilitation but a lot of americans think it should be punishment. this should be hell. >> suure, but we could make somebody wo

[applause] one of the leading chronicles of her history of lynching is brian stevenson who happens toho wanted very much to be here today but he could not. he helped build the national memorial for peace and justice in montgomery, alabama america's first site dedicated to understanding the legacy of lynching. you know, his extensive research so between 1877 and 1950, more than 4400 black people were murdered by lynching, most in the south but some of the north as well print that is a lot of folks man and a lot of silence for a long time. lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone, not everyone is created equal. chair to systematically hard civil rights terror not just in the dark but in broad daylight. innocent men, women, children hung bite nooses from trees, bodies burned, drowned, castrated. their crimes, trying to vote. trying to go to school. trying to own a business or preach the gospel. false accusations and murder, arson, robbery, simply being black often in crowds of white families gathered to celebrate the spectacle taking pictures of the bodies and mailin