“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice. (Cambridge University Press (September 29, 1989)”
― Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

“You can’t prosecute criminals in a system that’s run by the same criminals.”
― Jasun Ether, The Beasts of Success

“I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.

It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.”
― Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“A president cannot defend a nation if he is not held accountable to its laws.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“[T]here are some human rights that are so deep that we can't negotiate them away. I mean people do heinous, terrible things. But there are basic human rights I believe that every human being has. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the United Nations says it for me. And it says there are two basic rights that can't be negotiated that government doesn't give for good behavior and doesn't take away for bad behavior. And it's the right not to be tortured and not to be killed. Because the flip side of this is that then when you say OK we're gonna turn over -- they truly have done heinous things, so now we will turn over to the government now the right to take their life. It involves other people in doing essentially the same kind of act."

(PBS Frontline: Angel on Death Row)”
― Sister Helen Prejean

“A jury is always a more orthodox body than any defendant brought before it; for blacks it is usually a whiter group, for poor people, a more prosperous group...

Another lesson about the justice system: the way the judge charges the jury inevitably pushes them one way or the other, limits their independent judgment.”
― Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“American citizens should not lose their constitutional rights because they lack the money to pay for them.”
― Bernard B. Kerik, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054

“There is no greater threat to a free and democratic nation than a government that fails to protect its citizen’s freedom and liberty as aggressively as it pursues justice.”
― Bernard B. Kerik, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054

“No one should ever be wrongfully deprived of their rights to liberty and freedom without just cause, yet in the past 25 years alone thousands of people have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to tens of thousands of years in prison.”
― Bernard B. Kerik, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054

“You can tell a lot about a country by its prisons. In hippy-dippy Socialist Sweden, rapists and murders (all three of them) while away their days making arts and crafts in what are essentially taxpayer-funded mental health clinics. The Swedes’ theory seems to be that a) anyone who commits such a crime must be crazy and b) with enough art therapy, the individual in question will soon become just another law-abiding, nude-sunbathing pot-smoker. In America, we think people in prison are either the victims of some terrible government conspiracy, the victims of “society”—whatever that means—or heinous evildoers. And if they are heinous enough, we fry them with electricity, unless of course they find Jesus first. The Swedes, in a nutshell, are tolerant and forgiving, verging on the naïve; Americans are religious and vengeful, suspicious of their government, and suckers for tear-jerking tales of redemption.”
― Maureen Klovers

“What do those people think? That there is nothing more terrible than death. They themselves have invented Death, they are themselves afraid of it, and they try to frighten us with it.”
― Leonid Andreyev, Seven Who Were Hanged

“In a free and democratic society such as ours, justice should not eternally abrogate one’s rights to freedom and liberty, except in the most extreme cases.”
― Bernard B. Kerik, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054

“Death Penalty' in rarest of rare cases, should adorn criminal justice system in India,which would operate as a detterent mechanism. Abrogation of capital punishment and it's obliteration from the law, would be a great folly. In the human rights perspective, concretising the human rights of the criminal(perpetrator of a particular offense attracting Capital punishment ) by negating Human Rights of the victim is again a murder of justice.”
― Henrietta Newton Martin

“The permanent antidote to crime is education alone.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“It is quick to over punish and uninterested in rewarding good behavior. What would we say about an individual who had these characteristics? Mean? Cruel? Heartless? Mindless? Hypocritical? Stupid?”
― Bernard B. Kerik, From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054

“Antidote to Crime (The Sonnet)

The way to a crime-free world is simple,
But it lies outside of all the legal 'n partisan muck.
Take away the guns from the kids on the street,
Put books in their hands and food in their stomach.
By the time they grow up into young adults,
The prehistoric warmongers will be in death bed.
The children whose childhood you restored,
Will all be ready to hold the reins of world stage.
Law, policy 'n all that stuff surely have their place,
But not as the antidote to crime, chaos 'n descension.
The permanent antidote to crime is education alone,
Law ‘n policy are just to ensure its true democratization.
More than trying a crime, focus on treating environment.
Feed the hungry ‘n establish education, free from any debt.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“Police Commit The Worst Criminal Activities Than The Very People They've Locked Up. Biggest Corrupt & Racist Institution.”
― Witness

“The revolutionary cries of Black Lives Matter rest upon a simple yet poignant foundation: that Black lives, which haven't mattered, should matter, and that we must reform the criminal justice system, greatly change if not abolish the police, and grapple with systemic racism.”
― Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America

“Monitors and house arrest aren't rehabilitative or transformative - they don't support people in making changes that would be helpful to their lives, gaining needed resources, addressing harm or violence, or confronting the social forces that affect them.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“One of the main uses of most criminal justice systems is to minimize the number of people who are not white, by imprisoning innocent males who are neither white nor gay.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Don’t judge a book by its cover because the criminal justice system is already overcrowded as it is.”
― J.S. Mason, A Dragon, A Pig, and a Rabbi Walk into a Bar...and other Rambunctious Bites

“Redemption is an age-old concept rooted in many religions. It is a concept that presupposes that we will all make mistakes, and for some, that mistake will rise to the level of being a crime. Yes, there must be consequences and accountability. But after that debt to society has been paid, is it not the sign of a civil society that we allow people to earn their way back?”
― Kamala Harris, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey

“Desperate, Tillman confessed to charges of murder and rape for which he wasn't responsible - a few weeks later, the CPD caught the real killer - but Burge still turned Tillman's false confession over to Daley's prosecutors, and Tillman was convicted.”
― Natalie Y. Moore, Payback

“The way to a crime-free world is simple, but it lies outside of all the legal 'n partisan muck. Take away the guns from the kids on the street, put books in their hands and food in their stomach.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“Sometimes I get the feeling that the world is trying to punish me for fucking me up”
― Dmitry Dyatlov

“For the most part, America’s criminal justice system isn’t deliberately cruel. It’s just indifferent to the ways in which it breaks human beings. Few police officers want to contribute to mass incarceration or aid in the destruction of poor minority communities. But the absurdities and injustices are inherent in the system. Often, by the time the police get involved, the only available choices are bad ones.”
― Rosa Brooks, Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City

“As I learned more about the juvenile and criminal justice systems, I was reminded of all those jail and prison visits I'd made in my life. What struck me was just how regular it was. We have to take a second to process how messed up that is. We have normalized the abnormal so completely we don't even realize it. Why was this part of Black boys' coming-of-age? Why are some things praised and aspired to? Why are certain things like serving time held up as a badge of honor when they only lead to ruin?”
― Michael K. Williams, Scenes from My Life: A Memoir

“No one wakes up and says they want to be a gangbanger or a drug dealer- that's the last stop on the train. That what you do when you're drowning and reaching out for something- anything- to survive. By the time they get to the corner, there has been a series of things that led to that decision. No one wakes up at the top of the mountain and decides they would like it better down there on the bottom. They end up there out of desperation. We don't spend enough time examining the wider picture, the steps that get them there. We don't tell that part of the story. And to tell half the story is to spread a lie.”
― Michael K. Williams, Scenes from My Life: A Memoir

“The right of chastisement was replaced with a concern for marital harmony...non-interference in the name of marital harmony quickly became an accepted feature of the criminal justice system. Instead of punishing domestic abusers, family courts encourage reconciliation. The also insisted family conflict, including violence, should remain private.”
― Marcia A. Zug

“But, I don’t need to believe in my innocence. I just am innocent.”
“Not to the world out there you’re not.”
― Stephen Nothum, Teething and Other Tales From the American Dystopia