Chesa Boudin Quotes

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

Once they are charged, too many poor New Yorkers find themselves trapped by our unjust bail system. Unable to pay for bail, they languish in Rikers Island or other jails while they await trial, regardless of guilt.

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.

Defendants are being evaluated based on numerical grid without any aggravating circumstances being considered. The effect has been to transfer the disparity from the judge to the prosecutor allowing for a great deal of leeway on indictments.

In America, people with lots of money can easily avoid the consequences of bad bets and big losses by cashing out at the first sign of trouble.

The rich get richer. Not only because they have surpluses with which to invest, but because of the overriding emotional release they experience from having wealth.

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.

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.

In this country your guilty until proven wealthy.

It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people.

Money is the great equalizer.

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.

I try to deal with the poverty gap - to do policies for all of us rather than only for the wealthy.

One of the things I love about 'Orange' is I think we bring to light a lot of topics that, particularly in terms of prison, might go untalked about.

I don't have as much money as Rahm Emanuel.

The only people who claim that money is not important are people who have enough money so that they are relieved of the ugly burden of thinking about it.

The average net worth of the lower half of the distribution, representing 62 million households, was $11,000 in 2013. About one-fourth of these families reported zero wealth or negative net worth, and a significant fraction of those said they were "underwater" on their home mortgages, owing more than the value of the home. This $11,000 average is 50 percent lower than the average wealth of the lower half of families in 1989, adjusted for inflation.

This is the national equivalent of having no savings, your credit card maxed out, you didn't renew your insurance, and now your house has burned down. The only way we can start to solve this is rolling back the tax cuts for the rich, which would save about $70 billion.

Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

Nearly all inmates are drawn from the ranks of the powerless and the poor. A child of privilege frequently receives the benefit of the doubt; a child of poverty seldom does.

The reality is that capital punishment in America is a lottery. It is a punishment that is shaped by the constraints of poverty, race, geography and local politics.

The wealthy are generally impressed with an idea, that they shall never stand in need of public charitable relief; but a little less confidence would become them better.

Having money isn't everything, not having it is.

There is something wrong with our system when I can leave here and make billions of dollars in 10 years while millions of students can't even afford to pay off their loans, let alone start a business. We all know you don't get successful just by having a good idea or working hard. You get successful by being lucky too. If I had to support my family growing up, instead of having the time to learn how to code. If I didn't know that I was gonna be fine if Facebook didn't work out, then I wouldn't be standing up here today. And if we're honest, we all know how much luck we've had.

The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can't cure, Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor.