Susan Burton Quotes

We are fighting to pass clean-slate legislation in Pennsylvania to seal nonviolent misdemeanor records automatically after 10 years. We must provide opportunities for employment, housing, education, loans, and voting. We should not disenfranchise a third of the population.

The most direct path to success is a good job, but the road to employment for those with criminal records is often riddled with barriers. Removing those barriers would allow those with records to leave the past behind, support their families, make a positive future - and improve our economy.

Giving low-level offenders a second chance, no matter the color of their skin or the economic status they hold, can create opportunity for all of us.

We must build a movement for education, not incarceration. A movement for jobs, not jails. A movement that will end all forms of discrimination against people released from prison - discrimination that denies them basic human rights to work, shelter and food.

If you put a woman in prison for four years when she's young and make her pay her time in a horrible place and she wants to come out and work, and become a mother and be a contributor to society and pay taxes and you never give her that chance. There is something un-Canadian about that.

'Getting smart on crime' does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes.

We lose our right to be surprised that California has the highest recidivism rate in the country if we refuse to hire folks who have taken responsibility for their crimes and have done their time.

To change criminal justice policy in any meaningful way means to propose changing a very longstanding system. It's not realistic to think you can do it overnight.

We spend an awful lot of money on the criminal justice system that could better be spent at the other end of the spectrum.

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.

Restoring the rights of individuals who have served their time and reentered society is the right thing to do. Virginia's felon disenfranchisement policy is rooted in a tragic history of voter suppression and marginalization of minorities, and it needs to be overturned.

Trying to explain the First Step Act in prison reform in a tweet or Facebook post is not easy.

We'll get way further if we educate people and not lock them up.

We rarely have good alternatives to offer to prison - that's our default.

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.

When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both.

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

justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.

America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore.

It's dangerous to write people off just because they've been arrested.

The worst an ex-con is likely to do if given the right to vote is vote for a Democrat.

Once you have a felony conviction on your record, one of the most difficult things to do is to break the cycle of recidivism.

I think one of the things that I don't think people focus on is that there are some red states that have done some really innovative things when it comes to criminal justice reform, including on rehabilitation, reentry efforts. I think one of the things that we have seen in that regard is that you save money.

For the past seven years we have been cracking down on crime in Missouri, passing tougher laws for drug crimes and sex offenses and requiring prisoners to serve more time.

Smart on Crime says if you commit violent crimes, you should go to jail, and go to jail for extended periods of time. For people who are engaged in non-violent crimes - any crimes, for that matter - we are looking for sentences that are proportionate to the conduct that you engaged in.