Alternatives to Incarceration Quotes

Non-custodial sentences are certainly something to look at, more support in the community rather than within prisons is something we have to look at. There will of course still be women who need to be in prison, serious offenders, but I think there is scope to look at that number and I think that number could come down.

Boston's justice system is in serious need of reform. Many of its policies and practices are antiquated, expensive, and don't really even make Boston safer.

If we have to build more prisons, it means we have failed.

I think one of the things that I don't think people focus on is that there are some red states that have done some really innovative things when it comes to criminal justice reform, including on rehabilitation, reentry efforts. I think one of the things that we have seen in that regard is that you save money.

Instead of investing our resources in locking people up, let's invest more of those resources in our fellow citizens so they don't end up in the system to begin with. And if they do, they can get back on their feet.

Whilst long prison sentences will always be right for those who commit the most serious crimes, particularly of a violent or sexual nature, the fact is that the vast majority of all offenders will at some point be released.

I believe we are nearing a time when a combination of technology and radical thinking will make it possible for much more intensive and restrictive conditions to be applied in more creative and fundamental ways outside of prison.

'Getting smart on crime' does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes.

I'm intending to work on juvenile justice reform, sentencing reform, reentry, drug treatment, access to mental health care.

We spend an awful lot of money on the criminal justice system that could better be spent at the other end of the spectrum.

I believe the public therefore expect the justice system to focus on rehabilitation to reduce the risk of subsequent offending - and the likelihood of them becoming a victim of crime.

It has to be about more than punishment. We need to rehabilitate people. We lock up far too many people in America today. We lock them up as if locking them up is gonna solve the problem. And locking them up does not solve the problem. Did locking me up make me better? No, it did not. It made my struggle harder.

The truth is you cannot decrease the severity and certainty of sentences without increasing crime. It's simply impossible.

Retribution is no longer the dominant objective of the criminal law. Reformation and rehabilitation of offenders have become important goals of criminal jurisprudence.

Incarcerating non-violent offenders in the same population as more dangerous criminals has the effect of inculcating the former into a culture of criminality common among the latter, making them more of a risk to public safety upon release than when they originally went in.

I have never articulated a specific number, but I think a nation as great as we are, that professes to favor freedom and liberty, that we would find a way to evidence that in our criminal justice system by achieving what we know we can achieve: a reduction in crime, a reduction in taxpayer expense, and a reduction in the prison population.

Unless we maintain correctional institutions of such character that they create respect for law and government instead of breeding resentment and a desire for revenge, we are meeting lawlessness with stupidity and making a travesty of justice.

As a society we're always so quick and able to spend money on lawyers for someone for incarceration, but we don't make the corresponding commitment to the preventative components of it.

Mandatory prison terms is easy to say, but where are we going to put people?

For the offenders completing these short sentences whose lives are destabilised, and for society which incurs a heavy financial and social cost, prison simply isn't working.

The status quo tough-on-crime policies of the '90s and 2000s are not working and are not popular. And it provides me with hope about the possibilities for San Francisco and this whole country in terms of moving away from our dependence on prisons and jails to solve social problems.

I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.

In January 2013, I told the people in the Justice Department after the re-election that I wanted to focus on reforming the federal criminal justice system. I made an announcement in August of that year in San Francisco, when we rolled out the Smart on Crime initiative.

In terms of closing Rikers, we have to close Rikers, but we have to ensure that we're not just taking - that we're not continuing to incarcerate the same level of people. It doesn't do us much good if we close Rikers and then take that same amount of people and just distribute them to be incarcerated elsewhere.

The thing that happens is that politicians run on tough-on-crime rhetoric. You appeal to the public and say, 'Let's put more money into taller fences, tougher laws, tougher sentencing, handcuffs,' and where does that money come from? Well, immediately, it comes out of all the money needed for corrections.