Mass Incarceration Quotes

• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

  Michelle Alexander

  Jim Crow Laws, Age, War On Drugs

  "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness". Book by Michelle Alexander, January 5, 2010.

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• There are more African Americans under correctional control, in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850 a decade before the civil war began.

  Michelle Alexander

  War, Jail, African American

  "The mass incarceration of the Black community: an interview with Michelle Alexander, author of ‘The New Jim Crow’". Interview with Minister of Information JR Valrey, sfbayview.com. April 4, 2012.

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• Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and largely less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

  Michelle Alexander

  Educational, Men, Opportunity

  "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness". Book by Michelle Alexander, January 5, 2010.

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• Our system of mass incarceration is better understood as a system of racial and social control than a system of crime prevention or control.

  Michelle Alexander

  Prevention, Crime, Social

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.

  Michelle Alexander

  Race, Jim Crow Laws, Groups

  Michelle Alexander (2013). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, p.13, The New Press

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• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Peace, Kings

  "Letter from Birmingham Jail," 16 Apr. 1963

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• Mass incarceration is the most pressing racial justice issue of our time.

  Michelle Alexander

  Issues, Justice, Our Time

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• We have not ended racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it.

  Michelle Alexander

  America, Felons, Jim Crow

  "A Bitter Harvest: California, Marijuana, and the New Jim Crow". "Bringing Down the New Jim Crow" with Chris Moore-Backman, www.prx.org. November 15, 2011.

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• It's time to end the era of mass incarceration. We need a true national debate about how to reduce our prison population.

  Hillary Clinton

  Prison Population, Needs, Eras

  "Read: Hillary Clinton's huge new speech on criminal justice reform". Hillary Clinton's speech at Columbia University, www.vox.com. April 29, 2015.

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• One in three young African American men is currently under the control of the criminal justice system in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole - yet mass incarceration tends to be categorized as a criminal justice issue as opposed to a racial justice or civil rights issue (or crisis).

  Michelle Alexander

  Men, Rights, Jail

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Ending police brutality and mass incarceration. There is a growing left-right support for criminal justice reform.

  Ralph Nader

  Justice, Support, Police

  Source: www.cpa-connecticut.com

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• We're foolish if we think we're going to end mass incarceration unless we are willing to deal with the reality that huge percentages of poor people are going to remain jobless, locked out of the mainstream economy, unless and until they have a quality education that prepares them well for the new economy. There has got to be much more collaboration between the two movements and a greater appreciation for the work of the advocates in each community. It's got to be a movement that's about education, not incarceration - about jobs, not jails.

  Michelle Alexander

  Appreciation, Jobs, Reality

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Mass incarceration is a policy that's kind of built up over the last four decades and it's destroyed families and communities, and something we need to change. And it's fallen disproportionally on black and brown communities, especially black communities, and it's kind of a manifestation of structural racism.

  John Legend

  Racism, Community, Black

  Source: www.washingtontimes.com

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• We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it's necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and-perhaps-we all need some measure of unmerited grace.

  Bryan Stevenson

  Believe, Compassion, Punishment

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• The criminalization of Black life was something specific to the United States in the post-Reconstruction period and there's something like it happening today with mass incarceration, directed largely against black males.

  Noam Chomsky

  Black, Males, United States

  "Chomsky: "The Business Elites ... Are Instinctive Marxists"". Interview with Keane Bhatt, www.truth-out.org. November 19, 2010.

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• For children, the era of mass incarceration has meant a tremendous amount of family separation, broken homes, poverty, and a far, far greater level of hopelessness as they see so many of their loved ones cycling in and out of prison. Children who have incarcerated parents are far more likely themselves to be incarcerated.

  Michelle Alexander

  Children, Home, Cycling

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Many states can no longer afford to support public education, public benefits, public services without doing something about the exorbitant costs that mass incarceration have created.

  Bryan Stevenson

  Support, Cost, Benefits

  "Bryan Stevenson on the True Costs of Mass Incarceration". Interview with Theresa Riley, billmoyers.com. July 12, 2012.

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• No one should ever be locked away simply because they share the same race, ethnicity, or religion as a spy or terrorist. If that principle was not learned from the internment of Japanese Americans, then these are very dangerous times for our democracy.

  Fred Korematsu

  Race, Ethnicity, Religion

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• There is a tremendous amount of confusion and denial that exists about mass incarceration today, and that is the biggest barrier to movement building. As long as we remain in denial about this system, movement building will be impossible. Exposing youth in classrooms to the truth about this system and developing their critical capacities will, I believe, open the door to meaningful engagement and collective, inspired action.

  Michelle Alexander

  Meaningful, Believe, Doors

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Mass incarceration has become normalized in the United States. Poor folks of color are shuttled from decrepit, underfunded schools to brand new, high tech prisons and then relegated to a permanent undercaste - stigmatized as undeserving of any moral care or concern.

  Michelle Alexander

  School, Color, United States

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison.

  Michelle Alexander

  Men, Black, United States

  Michelle Alexander (2013). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, p.6, The New Press

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• The mass incarceration of poor people of color, particularly black men, has emerged as a new caste system, one specifically designed to address the social, economic, and political challenges of our time.

  Michelle Alexander

  Men, Color, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.

  Michelle Alexander

  Mean, Men, America

  "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness". Book by Michelle Alexander, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 5, 2010.

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• My goal is to end mass incarceration and change the laws to stop locking up low-level, nonviolent drug charges. Stop charging drug addicts as criminals.

  Michael K. Williams

  Law, Goal, Drug

  Source: www.ebony.com

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• For those who say that the war on drugs and the system of mass incarceration really isn't about race, I say there is no way we would allow the majority of young white men to be swept into the criminal justice system for minor drug offenses, branded criminals and felons, and then stripped of their basis civil and human rights while young black men who are engaged in the same activity trot off to college. That would never be accepted as the norm.

  Michelle Alexander

  War, College, Men

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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