Angela Davis Quotes

A system that warehouses people is not the cure for social ills

Imprisonment, as it exists today, is a worse crime than any of those committed by its victims.

Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of our social problems.

the prison system, inherently unjust and inhumane, is the ultimate expression of injustice and inhumanity in the society at large.

The second truism that we must understand is that poverty does not create our social problems, our social problems create our poverty.

The world of womens' prisons is indeed a microcosm.

Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities.

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.

The prison system of the United States is an unendurable disgrace to a civilized country.

We might think of prisons as miniature socialist societies, where government is in full control. For that reason, they are a complete failure for everyone but those who get the contracts to build the jails and those who work in them.… In prison, nothing takes place outside the government's purview. The people therein are wholly and completely controlled by state managers, which means that they have no value. And yet it is a place of monstrous chaos, abuse, and corruption. Is it any wonder that people coming out of prison are no better off than before they went in, and are often worse, and scarred for life?

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.

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

We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country. It's destroying families, it's destroying communities and we're the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration.

Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.

Since the late 1970's, the main focus of prisons has been punishment, not rehabilitation. It's hard to believe, but you would be hard-pressed to find a meaningful violence-prevention class in a federal or state penitentiary. And 'we the people' are footing the bill to keep these folks imprisoned. It costs on average $46,000 a year to keep an adult incarcerated in California and about the same for New York State.

The one public system in which America goes out of its way to provide services to African-Americans is prison.

America is the greatest nation ever founded. The ideals are the greatest ever espoused in human history, and we just need the country to live up to them. But what I worry about are the 1 million black men in the prison system.

There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don't.

All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away.

I believe, and I may be wrong, the system sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate, but they don't do that in a lot of cases.

I do a number of things working on human rights issues, prison recidivism rates, and then I also push and have worked a lot on the social issues of rebuilding the family.

I don't know, it may be that poor people are the only ones who commit crimes, but I do know that they are the only ones who serve prison sentences.

Will the American People Never Cease to Oppress and Torture the Helpless poor?

The primary contact between Black men and the government today is the prison system.

One third of African American males are destined to be in prison sometime in their lifetime.