Marcia L. Fudge Quotes

We need to rethink a system that has targeted young people, particularly young people of color, for nonviolent crimes.

I think we need to rethink our ideas about what policing is and should be. I think we need to rethink our ideas about the criminal justice system as a whole, including the hysterically named corrections system. I mean, what's being corrected? Look, none of it's working.

We loathe mass incarceration. We loathe police brutality. But most of us have absolutely no idea how to address the critical flaws in our justice system.

When I travel and speak across the country, I often tell college students that we are making a significant mistake when we say to each other that this criminal justice of ours is broken. To say it's broken would be to suggest that it was well designed and had good intentions from the start.

The whole reason behind my album 'Free TC' is seeing all that police brutality, injustice, mass incarceration.

The fate of millions of people—indeed the future of the black community itself—may depend on the willingness of those who care about racial justice to re-examine their basic assumptions about the role of the criminal justice system in our society.

I'm a prison abolitionist because the prison system as it is set up is just not working. It's horrible.

We spend an awful lot of money on the criminal justice system that could better be spent at the other end of the spectrum.

[On urban unrest:] The only way to get respect is to be willing to use violence.

We have too many Black men in jail waiting for justice and too many Black women in church waiting for Jesus.

The criminal justice system is not working and people want something that works.

I am happy that the urgency to reform our broken criminal justice system has found allies all across the political spectrum.

I did not learn the flaws of the criminal-justice system in law school or college or by reading about it. I grew up knowing the flaws and how it was disproportionately impacting the black community. It's not academic for me.

In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn't be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.

I believe this system of mass incarceration would have Dr. King turning in his grave. There's no doubt in my mind that Dr. King would be doing everything in his power to build a movement to end mass incarceration in the United States; a movement for education, not incarceration.

Mass incarceration is a massive system of racial and social control.

We need criminal justice reform. You have heard people talk about that all over the country. I was able to work on that specific issue at home.

I am still committed to building a movement to end mass incarceration, but I will not do it with blinders on. If all we do is end mass incarceration, this movement will not have gone nearly far enough.

Black and brown communities are significantly and disproportionately impacted by deficiencies in our criminal justice system.

So many stories have been told about Black Lives Matter. The beauty of building out a decentralized network, the beauty of building out something that's a hashtag, is that so many people can take it and run with it. The bad part about that is so many folks can take it and run with it - and misuse it and co-opt it.

I would hate for people to think that 'Strong Island' is just about a family's grief. It is about a family's grief, yes, but it is also an interrogation of our criminal justice system.

We must put an end to the corruption and systemic racism in our justice system, and that starts by electing progressive district attorneys who will fight for real justice across the country.

God blessed us with all this money, so why not take the money and put it into my brother's case? Talk about social and racial injustice in our country, and mass incarceration in our country?

Everybody remember, Black Lives Matter.

The people who have been unjustly disenfranchised by our criminal justice system and the people who daily fight for them always have, and always will be, the inspiration and focus of my efforts.