“I would create a law that said: ‘You have to exhaust all treatment possibilities before incarcerating someone’.”

Before passing the bar, Katie did a great deal of things, bartending included. “I really didn’t know what to do when I graduated so I went to Alaska for a year, and I end up staying for 4 years.” In Alaska Katie worked in a bookstore, for a newspaper, for a surveying company and at a bar “for about a week”. After Alaska she studied law in Boston and finally moved to Denver, where she found a job, her husband and a life of crime. Please, explain, Katie. “People charged with crimes take up most of my time.” Does becoming a defense attorney change a person? “I feel less afraid because I know the people who are committing crimes are people who generally are in a real bad spot.” Katie described a revolutionary kind of court being instituted in parts of the United States: “A problem-solving court is focused in rehabilitation and treatment as opposed to punishment. We want to get people back into the community, rather then separating them from society.” Here’s a random fact for your next Trivial Pursuit game: the U.S.A. has 2.22 million people behind bars, a world record. “If we can do more to treat addiction and mental health, which I think is finally part of the conversation, then, yes, I think crime will go down.”