Jimmy Carter Quotes

My father used to always say to me that, you know, if a guy goes out to steal a loaf of bread to feed his family, they'll give him 10 years, but a guy can do white-collar crime and steal the money of thousands and he'll get probation and a slap on the wrist.

How vainly shall we endeavor to repress crime by our barbarous punishment of the poorer class of criminals.

Never before has a supposedly free country denied basic liberty to so many of its citizens. In December 2006, some 2.25 million persons were being held in the nearly 5,000 prisons and jails that are scattered across America’s urban and rural landscapes…. On average, state inmates have fewer than 11 years of schooling. They are also vastly disproportionately black and brown.

Only poor people go to jail.

There is no concept more generally cherished by publishers than that of the Undeserving Poor.

I lived in a kind of a middle class home, and I didn't really have a lot of experience with the justice system or prisons or really being aware of that world.

But if you go over the line, you don't want to get stuck in a Nevada State court room. Honestly, because Nevada has been doing a good job of putting California criminals in jail. I mean, we couldn't put OJ in jail, but they did. We couldn't put Paris Hilton in jail, but they did.

When the rich think about the poor, they have poor ideas.

It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.

Impunity for the great thief, and jail for the thief who steals a loaf.

It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.

We know that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But we know, and Coretta knew, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty Abounds. For war millions more, but no more for the poor.

I see no reason why big-shot crooks should go free while the poor ones go to jail.

People who are wealthy tend to be treated much more fairly in our criminal justice system.

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

The thief or swindler who has gained great wealth by his delinquency has a better chance than the small thief of escaping the rigorous penalty of the law.

There are poor people of color in this country whose bodies, locked in cages, enrich the prison-industrial complex.

In Brazil, a poor man goes to jail when he steals. When a rich man steals, he becomes a minister.

It's a monstrous idea to put people in prison and keep them there.

Nearly all inmates are drawn from the ranks of the powerless and the poor. A child of privilege frequently receives the benefit of the doubt; a child of poverty seldom does.

The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the marvel of human society.

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.

Do you hate poor people or do you just hate poor people with jobs?

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.

One of the strangest things about life is that the poor, who need the money the most, are the ones that never have it.