Mandatory Minimum Sentences Quotes

We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country. It's destroying families, it's destroying communities and we're the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration.

The big lock-up is about drugs. Here's the real scam. The drug war is one of the games to get more convictions and prisoners.

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.

Today 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. There are millions of African-Americans now cycling in and out of prisons and jails or under correctional control or saddled with criminal records. In major American cities today, more than half of working-age African-American men either are under correctional control or are branded felons, and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives.

But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes.

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

Prosecutors frequently overcharge, load up charges on individual defendants, knowing that three strikes laws and harsh mandatory minimum sentences will force people to plea bargain and essentially convict themselves because they're terrified of doing a life sentence for a relatively minor crime.

The USA has more people in prison that any other country, including countries with much larger populations. 13% of the population is black but 80% of the people in prison are black, mostly for soft crimes.

Our criminal justice system has swallowed up too many people I love.

The war on drugs causes other supplemental crimes to take place because of the original illegality of it. But then again, that's the other reason that they're fighting it is the corporate prisons they have now. Because they've privatized all our prisons, corporations have to make money, and the only way they can make money is, I believe, the prisons have to be at least 80-90 percent full. That's why the United States - which is home of the brave, land of the free - we have more people in prison than any other country in the world.

Our criminal justice system has swallowed up too many people I love. I am proud to join the ACLU in the fight to make mass incarceration a thing of the past.

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

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.

I agree with President Obama and Attorney General Holder that we need to reform our criminal sentencing laws.

The Federal prison population has increased more than 7-fold over the past 20 years.

I think the biggest problem in our country is mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex. From the Rockefeller drug laws to stand your ground to stop and frisk, all these are pointing people, especially and disproportionately black and brown people, towards the criminal-justice system. It's depleting whole generations of people.

By creating false environment of a war on drugs, and cruel and unusual punishment with these crimes, 50% of our U.S. population is in jail without having hurt anybody, mostly for drugs.

If Americans actually have the conversation about our disastrous prison policies, we'll understand the trends all move in very dangerous directions: we lock up more people, for less violent crime, at ever greater expense, breeding more dangerous criminals who often come out unemployable, violent and isiolated.

One out of every eight prisoners in the world is an African American. We are warehousing people as a profit to shareholders or for benefits to communities that get to host federal prisons. It is modern slavery.

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

I don't believe we should allow thousands of violent felons to be released early from prison, nor do I believe we should reduce sentences for violent offenders in the future.

People charged with drug offenses, though, are typically poor people of color. They are routinely charged with felonies and sent to prison.

I was a federal public defender during the most important years of the drug war. I saw people go to jail for nothing, and go to jail for a long time.

Justified by the war on drugs, the United States is in the midst of a prison binge made obvious by the fact that since 1970, the number of people behind bars... has increased 600 percent.

I will build the wall and I will impose tough mandatory minimum - remember this - tough mandatory minimum prison sentences for deported illegal immigrants who try to reenter the country. They keep coming back and back and back.