Crime Quotes by Michelle Alexander

Most criminologists today will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the United States have had relatively little to do with…

— Michelle Alexander

People are swept into the criminal justice system - particularly in poor communities of color - at very early ages... typically for…

— Michelle Alexander

In this country, we force millions of people - who are largely black and brown - into a permanent second-class status simply…

— Michelle Alexander

Most people seem to assume that this dramatic surge in imprisonment was due to a corresponding surge in crime, particularly violent crime.

— Michelle Alexander

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

— Michelle Alexander

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

— Michelle Alexander

“Who becomes a social pariah and excommunicated from civil society and who trots off to college bears scant relationship to the morality…

— Michelle Alexander

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

What defenders of the system typically fail to acknowledge is that the reason violent offenders comprise a fairly large percentage of the…

— Michelle Alexander

Prosecutors frequently overcharge, load up charges on individual defendants, knowing that three strikes laws and harsh mandatory minimum sentences will force people…

— Michelle Alexander

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

The great gift of 'Incarceration Nations' is that, by introducing a wide range of approaches to crime, punishment, and questions of justice…

— Michelle Alexander

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

Private landlords as well as public landlords are free to discriminate against people with criminal records for the rest of their lives.…

— Michelle Alexander

The war on drugs has been the engine of mass incarceration. Drug convictions alone constituted about two-thirds of the increase in the…

— Michelle Alexander

Incarceration rates - especially black incarceration rates - have soared regardless of whether crime has been going up or down in any…

— Michelle Alexander

... as recently as the mid-1970s, the most well-respected criminologists were predicting that the prison system would soon fade away. Prison did…

— Michelle Alexander

“As law enforcement budgets exploded, so did prison and jail populations. In 1991, the Sentencing Project reported that the number of people…

— Michelle Alexander

“Defendants are typically denied meaningful legal representation, pressured by the threat of lengthy sentences into a plea bargain, and then placed under…

— Michelle Alexander

When young black men reach a certain age - whether or not there is incarceration in their families - they themselves are…

— Michelle Alexander

The wave of punitiveness that washed over the United States with the rise of the drug war and the get tough movement…

— Michelle Alexander

“The percentage of drug arrests that result in prison sentences (rather than dismissal, community service, or probation) has quadrupled, resulting in a…

— Michelle Alexander

I think it's critically important for people to understand that this system of mass incarceration governs not just those who find themselves…

— Michelle Alexander

“of the nearly 7.3 million people currently under correctional control, only 1.6 million are in prison.27 This caste system extends far beyond…

— Michelle Alexander

“The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose…

— Michelle Alexander

“Before we begin our tour of the drug war, it is worthwhile to get a couple of myths out of the way.…

— Michelle Alexander

“Criminals, it turns out, are the one social group in America we have permission to hate. In 'colorblind' America, criminals are the…

— Michelle Alexander

“The extraordinary increase in prison admissions due to parole and probation violations is due almost entirely to the War on Drugs. With…

— Michelle Alexander

“Even beyond private prison companies, a whole range of prison profiteers must be reckoned with if mass incarceration is to be undone,…

— Michelle Alexander

“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

“Those who have been swept within the criminal justice system know that the way the system actually works bears little resemblance to…

— Michelle Alexander

“The real point here, however, is not that innocent people are locked up. That has been true since penitentiaries first opened in…

— Michelle Alexander

“The notion that a vast gulf exists between "criminals" and those of us who have never served time in prison is a…

— Michelle Alexander

“The racial dimension of mass incarceration is its most striking feature. No other country in the world imprisons so many of its…

— Michelle Alexander

Once you have been branded a criminal or felon, you are typically trapped for life.

— Michelle Alexander

What does this system seem designed to do? As I see it, it seems designed to send people right back to prison,…

— Michelle Alexander

Thousands of people go to jail, go to prison, every year without even meeting with an attorney.

— Michelle Alexander

The greatest myth about mass incarceration is that it has been driven by crime and crime rates. It's just not true.

— Michelle Alexander

Sociologists have frequently observed that governments use punishment primarily as a tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of…

— Michelle Alexander

Many offenders are tracked for prison at early ages, labeled as criminals in their teen years, and then shuttled from their decrepit,…

— Michelle Alexander