Amaury Nolasco Quotes

Incarceration is supposed to keep the community safe from your behavior.

All emphasis in American prisons is on punishment, retribution, and disparagement, and almost none is on rehabilitation.

I've worked in the prison system for five years, and most of those folks in prison didn't have a direction.

It has to be about more than punishment. We need to rehabilitate people. We lock up far too many people in America today. We lock them up as if locking them up is gonna solve the problem. And locking them up does not solve the problem. Did locking me up make me better? No, it did not. It made my struggle harder.

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.

We spend $94,000 per prisoner [per year]. There is a tension between punishment and making people’s lives better and I don’t actually think that we have done the second part well. We put people in prison and expect them to come out

The purpose of the criminal justice system is both to rehabilitate and to punish. If we can rehabilitate somebody, that's a huge, huge win.

Unfortunately, if the man who leaves the prison gates is just as likely or - as is sometimes grievously the case - more likely to offend as he was when he entered them, then we fail not only the individual but public safety as well.

After six prison commitments, at the end of those, I was more broken than when I went into the system.

The prison system today is so messed up. Some people say, "Some criminals are made in prison," and it's actually true. The numbers and the facts are very clear. Almost 70% re-offend, and they re-offend, more often than not, with a worse crime than what they were put away for. And what's mind-boggling is that it's not in anyone's interests. It's a waste of enormous resources, with money, but also all of these young men and women that have their lives ruined.

Jail and the streets go hand in hand. You can't have one with out the other. They coincide.

America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore.

I know what it's like to be ignored, and I think that is the big problem about the prison system: These people are being thrown away. There is no sense of rehabilitation. In some places, they are trying to do things. But, in most cases, it's a holding cell.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

I strongly believe that for serious and violent criminals, we must absolutely hold them accountable for their crimes and send them to prison.

Of the three official objects of our prison system: vengeance, deterrence, and reformation of the criminal, only one is achieved; and that is the one which is nakedly abominable.

The United States imprisons many non-violent offenders who could instead be required to pay fines, perform community service, and make restitution to their victims… Maintaining our vast network of prisons consumes resources that could be better spent on education and other crime prevention efforts... Rather than reforming offenders, prison too often degrades and dehumanizes prisoners, making the task of rehabilitation and reentry into society even more difficult.

Too many Americans are going to too many prisons for far too long.

A reform in the system of criminal jurisprudence, by which the death penalty shall no longer be inflicted; and by which, during that term, a portion of the prison employment shall be for, and the product thereof be faithfully paid over to, the support of the criminal’s family; and by which our so-called prisons shall be virtually transformed into vast reformatory workshops, from which the unfortunate may emerge to be useful members of society, instead of the alienated citizens they now are.

Prisons are out of public sight, and most often out of mind. But the vast majority of prisoners will at some point leave jail and rejoin our communities, which is why what happens inside matters to us all.

We must do better by offenders who are sent to prison to make them less likely to return.

I think we will be safer when we can concentrate law enforcement and criminal justice resources and energies on those individuals who truly need, for the safety of society... to be incarcerated.

There's definitely a way to fix the prison system. First of all, you gotta get a rehabilitation center in prisons, that every inmate must go through.

What does this system seem designed to do? As I see it, it seems designed to send people right back to prison, which is what happens about 70% of the time.

Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey. Every time we turn the key we twist the knife of fate, because every time we cage a man we close him in with hate.