Defenders of the status quo will often try to mislead the public by saying, "Just look at our state prisons: nearly half… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
My great crime wasn't refusing to represent an innocent man; my great crime was imagining that there was some path to racial… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Eventually [black men] are arrested, whether they've committed any serious crime or not, and branded criminals or felons for life. Upon release,… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
We must build a movement for education, not incarceration. A movement for jobs, not jails. A movement that will end all forms… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
For children, the era of mass incarceration has meant a tremendous amount of family separation, broken homes, poverty, and a far, far… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
What does this system seem designed to do? As I see it, it seems designed to send people right back to prison,… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Many offenders are tracked for prison at early ages, labeled as criminals in their teen years, and then shuttled from their decrepit,… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“One in three young African American men is currently under the control of the criminal justice system—in prison, in jail, on probation,… — michelle alexander Copy Share Image
“Although 'debtor's prison' is illegal in all states, many states use the threat of probation or parole revocation as a debt-collection tool.… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“The racial dimension of mass incarceration is its most striking feature. No other country in the world imprisons so many of its… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Few would guess that our prison population leaped from approximately 350,000 to 2.3 million in such a short period of time due… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Criminals, it turns out, are the one social group in America we have permission to hate. In 'colorblind' America, criminals are the… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Thousands of people go to jail, go to prison, every year without even meeting with an attorney. — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Once you've acquired a criminal record, you can be discriminated against legally in employment, housing, and access to education and public benefits.… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Rather than shaming and condemning an already deeply stigmatized group, we, collectively, can embrace them – not necessarily their behavior, but them… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Once you have been branded a criminal or felon, you are typically trapped for life. — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“The percentage of drug arrests that result in prison sentences (rather than dismissal, community service, or probation) has quadrupled, resulting in a… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Defendants are typically denied meaningful legal representation, pressured by the threat of lengthy sentences into a plea bargain, and then placed under… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
People return home from prison and face legal discrimination in virtually all areas of social and economic and political life. They are… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
People are swept into the criminal justice system - particularly in poor communities of color - at very early ages... typically for… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
After the end of slavery, African-American men were arrested in mass, and they were arrested for extremely minor crimes like loitering, standing… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Before we begin our tour of the drug war, it is worthwhile to get a couple of myths out of the way.… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Historians will likely wonder how we could describe the new caste system as a system of crime control, when it is difficult… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
It's not crime that makes us more punitive in the United States. It's the way we respond to crime and how we… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
If you ask for good schools, you aren't likely to get them. If you ask for jobs or economic investment, you won't get that… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The uncomfortable reality we must face is that California, like the nation as a whole, has treated generations of African Americans and Latinos as… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Seeing race is not the problem. Refusing to care for the people we see is the problem. The fact that the meaning of race… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Since the nations founding, African Americans repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die but then… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Felon disenfranchisement laws have been more effective in eliminating black voters in the age of mass incarceration than they were under Jim Crow…These figures… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“That was King’s dream—a society that is capable of seeing each of us, as we are, with love. That is a goal worth fighting… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Activists take the risks, while advocates are professional tinkerers with the system. What's necessary is for those who are advocates to support those who… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Civil rights protests were frequently depicted as criminal rather than political in nature, and federal courts were accused of excessive “lenience” toward lawlessness, thereby… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
We cannot 'fix' the police without a revolution of values and radical change to the basic structure of our society. — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
If we continue to tell ourselves the popular myths about racial progress or, worse yet, if we say to ourselves that the problem of… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The mass incarceration of poor people of color, particularly black men, has emerged as a new caste system, one specifically designed to address the… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“[T]he slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery. —W.E.B Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
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