Hillary Clinton Quotes

In terms of closing Rikers, we have to close Rikers, but we have to ensure that we're not just taking - that we're not continuing to incarcerate the same level of people. It doesn't do us much good if we close Rikers and then take that same amount of people and just distribute them to be incarcerated elsewhere.

It's time to end the era of mass incarceration. We need a true national debate about how to reduce our prison population.

We should not have people in prisons and jails who aren't a violent threat.

And please, please, lets us put mental health back on the top of our national agenda, our prisons and our jails are now our mental health institutions.

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.

[We have to make] a distinction between dangerous violent criminals and people who are engaged in non-violent criminal activities….Your taking somebody out of the economy, breaking up their families, and putting them in a place with hardened criminals. I think that it is pretty hard to argue that has been a positive long-term result.

The majority of the people in jail are suffering from mental illness.

There's nothing conservative about allowing ourselves to become so inured to a 'tough on crime' frame of mind that we would abandon tested alternatives that can yield better outcomes.

I have never articulated a specific number, but I think a nation as great as we are, that professes to favor freedom and liberty, that we would find a way to evidence that in our criminal justice system by achieving what we know we can achieve: a reduction in crime, a reduction in taxpayer expense, and a reduction in the prison population.

I want to stop piling people into prisons and stop branding people with a felony for a personal weakness.

Prisons are hate factories, Pastor, and society wants more and more of them.

Unless we maintain correctional institutions of such character that they create respect for law and government instead of breeding resentment and a desire for revenge, we are meeting lawlessness with stupidity and making a travesty of justice.

Rehabilitation is such a tiny part of prison life, and I think that has to change. The funny thing is that there's even bi-partisan agreement that it has to change, but the question is how. I don't know how.

Our criminal justice system has swallowed up too many people I love.

Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law enforcement reason.

First of all, I didn't suggest that we should simply get rid of all prisons.

I'd rather deal with Tipper than Bush. He's trying to kill everybody in jail.

In January 2013, I told the people in the Justice Department after the re-election that I wanted to focus on reforming the federal criminal justice system. I made an announcement in August of that year in San Francisco, when we rolled out the Smart on Crime initiative.

I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.

We must stop the trend of closing schools and building prisons.

I'm intending to work on juvenile justice reform, sentencing reform, reentry, drug treatment, access to mental health care.

Mandatory prison terms is easy to say, but where are we going to put people?

Our job is to incarcerate offenders and not hospitalize sick people…. We are reluctant to advocate better mental help facilities within our jail as it would only attract more people in need of mental health services

Any politician who wants to eliminate parole just doesn’t understand law enforcement.

The drug culture has shaped at least one major change since the Sixties; It became the basis for overloading our prisons.