incarceration alternatives Quotes

Keeping them behind bars does little to reduce crime, but it does a lot to tear apart families, our prisons and our jails are now our mental health institutions.

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.

Prisons where people can't even work is the worst punishment you can think of. And I don't think we should put all convicts in such facilities where people are deprived of their freedom.

The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.

A life sentence without parole protects public safety while sparing us the barbarity of killing our own. It teaches our children that violence will be punished, but not by emulating the violent. This seems eminently more consistent with American ideals than continuing to share the killing stage with some of the world's worst human rights violators.

An institution like Guantanamo in its present form cannot and must not exist in the long term. We must find different ways of dealing with prisoners. As far as I'm concerned there's no question about that.

I have, ever since the first day of my campaign, called for criminal justice reform.

I feel like you don't have to go through jail, that's not part of bein' a man.

We've got to be able to distinguish between dangerous individuals who need to be incapacitated and incarcerated versus young people who are in an environment in which they are adapting, but if given different opportunities, a different vision of life, could be thriving the way we are. That's what strikes me. There but for the grace of God. And that, I think, is something that we all have to think about.

If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

Not all prisons have bars