Eric Schneiderman Quotes

There are no wealthy people on Rikers Island because if you are wealthy, you go free because you make bail.

The problem with money bail, for those who aren't familiar with it, is that it puts a price tag on freedom. It says to someone who is wealthy that no matter how dangerous you are, you can buy your way out.

What is the price of justice? What is the price of justice? When bail is set unreasonably high, people are behind bars only because they are poor. Not because they're a danger or a flight risk - only because they are poor. They don't have money to get out of jail and they certainly don't have money to flee anywhere.

I came out even with all the struggles I endured on Rikers Island.

The innocent are frequently punished instead of the guilty

Holding people presumed to be innocent in jail pre-trial simply because they cannot afford to pay their bail extracts huge human and financial costs.

Here's the crazy thing: if I was guilty I would be entitled to job training, housing, medical treatment. But I have nothing. I was released with five dollars and 37 cents of my own money.

To admit guilt for nonexistent crimes is unacceptable to me.

Lots of people think I went to prison. I never went to prison. I was in jail without bail.

If you're hit with a lawsuit that's untrue and the reasons you're hit with it aren't clear to you, there's a very big inclination on people's part to want to take responsibility for it - that this must be happening because I'm a terrible person, I did something, and I'm getting repaid for it.

I did almost a year in prison, a year in prison, just because my name is Foxy Brown.

I mean, I was just one of the ones who got exposed, and because of the position I was in, where I was in my life, it went mainstream. A lot of people got out of it after my situation, not because I went to prison but because it was sad for them to see me go through something that was so pointless, that could have been avoided.

The real answer to the problem of crime committed by persons on bail, and indeed the solution to the general problem of crime, lies not in preventive detention of individuals presumed innocent, but in the speedy trial of the accused and the swift and sure punishment of the guilty.

The prison officials practiced such excessive cruelty that they were jeopardizing the entire system

Everybody in Detroit knows somebody who is in prison…. In Detroit, most of us are one incident from being locked up.

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

All of us have made mistakes in our lives, but only some of us have had to pay for the mistakes. [By going to jail.]

Our proclivity for incarceration costs American taxpayers about $80 billion a year. And that doesn’t count the vast indirect costs visited upon the incarcerated, their families and communities.

There is not a single man in prison today who does not claim to be an ardent patriot

How does it happen that virtually every corporation in America has been found guilty of violating the law and not one CEO has got to jail?

While I bore the titel of "Honorable Judge", I felt less than honorable and moroe like a complicit tool of an unjust system.

They would go back and listen to my matches, and two days later, I'd be fined. Because no one heard it while it was being played, but they heard it on some mic behind the court. Is that the way it should be? I don't think so.

We have to end cash bail.

In San Francisco, I am proud to say that one of my first mandates as district attorney was that my staff would never ask the court to impose money bail. If we believe someone is too dangerous to be released, then it doesn't matter how wealthy they are - we should ask the court to detain them.

I was whisked away by the Rajasthan police from Ahmedabad as soon as they realised I had applied for bail. They first put me in a filthy cell in the police station, then took me to jail where I was locked up with five hardcore criminals. It was a nightmare. We had to sleep on the cold floor. That's where one sleeps in jail.