Eugene Jarecki Quotes

The system of mass incarceration depends almost entirely on the cooperation of those it seeks to control.

Private-sector firms are increasingly active in the prison industry and they and the militantly unionized correctional officers, almost all unskilled labor, constantly lead public demands for more criminal statutes and more draconian penalties.

If we went back to the imprisonment rate we had in the early '70s, something like four out of five people employed in the prison industry would lose their jobs. That's what you're up against.

We think it's OK for us to have the world's largest prison population and for one racial group to be overrepresented therein.

While mass incarceration is a national crisis, it was built locally.

The fact that more than 50 percent of Americans have an immediate family member either currently or formerly incarcerated tells you a lot about just how defining a feature of American culture incarceration has become.

For those interested in learning more about corporations and private individuals profiting from the caging of human beings, I highly recommend the book "Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money From Mass Incarceration."

The percentage of Americans in the prison system, has doubled since 1985.

I'm suggesting that we abolish the social function of prisons.

One out of 100 citizens of the U.S. is going to prison, and it's not that the system is making criminals, it's that it's making criminals better criminals. We're breeding them like rats and it has to change.

The prison industrial complex is perhaps, at least domestically, the most striking example of us putting profit before people. It all stems from one basic misunderstanding: that the public good can be shepherded by private interests.

Today, 15 years after crime peaked, the American prison system has become a leviathan unmatched in human history. Never has a supposedly ‘free country’ denied basic liberty to so many of its citizens…. We have become a nation of jailers.

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.

I have never understood the liberal assumption that if there were justice in the world, there would be fewer rather than more prisoners.

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

The jails and prisons are the new insane asylums. That’s what we are.

How come we never use prison, the failure of prison, as a reason not to give more prison? There's never a moment where we say, 'OK, well, prison hasn't worked, so we're not going to try that again.'

The U.S. incarcerates more of its people than any nation in the world, or any nation in history.

The United States is Fast Becoming One of the Biggest Open-Air Prisons on Earth

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

You shouldn't have a profit motivation to fill prison cells with young Americans.

Mass incarceration is the most pressing racial justice issue of our time.

Capitalism needs and must have the prison to protect itself from the criminals it has created.

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'm a prison abolitionist because the prison system as it is set up is just not working. It's horrible.