Denise Mina Quotes

I think that crime is a good vehicle for looking at society in general because the nature of the crime novel means that you draw on a wide group of social possibilities.

It is unfair to the public to pretend that law enforcement efforts more than a marginal solution to the problem of crime.

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.

Wambaugh's naturalistic portrait of the cop world turned 'Centurions' and 'The Blue Knight' (1972) into bestsellers, but his next two books made him relevant to a larger audience and to the next generation of crime writers.

Crime fiction confirms our belief, despite some evidence to the contrary, that we live in a rational, comprehensible, and moral universe.

The fact that our legal system has become so tolerant of police lying indicates how corrupted our criminal justice system has become by declarations of war, 'get tough' mantras, and a seemingly insatiable appetite for locking up and locking out the poorest and darkest among us.

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

We have a community where almost 50 percent of the people in the city of Cleveland alone have some type of record. I represent one of the poorest districts in America - out of 435, I'm 422.

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.

One of the problems in America is that everybody focuses on their own narrow little bit of the problem without connecting punishment and prevention together, without connecting the schools and the police together, without connecting the pediatricians and the social workers together.

To be on the other side of the law-and-order machine in this country is awful. It is dehumanizing and degrading and deforming. It fills you with a helpless rage because, once there, you can only make things worse for yourself by speaking up.

Before being a mom, I remember going on a Twitter rant during the whole George Zimmerman trial in Florida about my younger brothers and how one day I'll be the mom of a black son.

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.

Perhaps there should be a box on the census form that says, 'I'm a criminal.' Everyone who has ever committed a crime would be required to check it. If everyone were forced to acknowledge their own criminality, maybe we, as a nation, would second-guess our apparent zeal for denying full citizenship to those branded felons.

There is a legitimate role for the police to keep the peace, but there should be a difference between a police response and a military response.

I grew up in an environment where it was permittable to use violence to solve a problem. But it was not permittable ever to call the police under any circumstances. That was the kind of doctrine of my household. My dad was a career-long criminal, and you weren't calling the police for any reason.

Prisoners do matter when analyzing the severity of racial inequality in the U.S. Yet because they are out of sight and out of mind, it is easy to imagine that we are making far more racial progress than we actually are.

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

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.

Many aspects of the George Zimmerman trial have deeply affected me.

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.

Everyone needs a place to live. Everyone needs a place to come home to every night. I don't understand why our society, our government, can think that you can lock a person away for months or years... and then release them back after they pay their debt without any support and expect it to be okay.

Much of the foundation of our criminal justice system is derived from slave patrols and was created when African Americans could still be bought, sold, and traded.

Years now, decades, of visiting my parents behind bars taught me hard lessons about how broken the criminal justice system is - about how devoid of compassion it is. It's not healing the harm that victims experience. It's not rehabilitating people. And in many ways, it's making us less safe.

A major loss by a Democratic prosecutor at the hands of the BLM movement could alter the political landscape in a way that might actually change the way prosecutors, and ultimately police departments, operate.