Marcia L. Fudge Quotes

If crime went down 100 percent it would still be 50 percent higher than it should be.

The prison-industrial complex, poverty, and the school system has more effect on a young black male in America than Jay-Z does, by far. And that's not a diss to Jay-Z. The crime rate in the black community was high before hip hop. Rapping about it is just a reflection of the life a lot of people are living.

Everyone needs a place to live. Everyone needs a place to come home to every night. I don't understand why our society, our government, can think that you can lock a person away for months or years... and then release them back after they pay their debt without any support and expect it to be okay.

I want to look at the community I came from and what role incarceration has played there.

At the same, we need to remain sensitive to the reality that we are still an African society in which the majority of the people and communities live under severe deprivations and afflictions that are no fault of theirs.

In the city, a lot of crime happens, a lot of violence happens from time to time.

Knife crime and gun crime is poverty-driven, and poverty leads to insecurity.

Many who resort to crime ultimately can't read or write.

Statistics say that I'm supposed to be in jail. And I'm not supposed to be alive.

We can't just rail against crime. We must speak of the root problems - devastating family breakup, an insidious culture of violence that cheapens human life, skyrocketing prisoner recidivism rates that rob our communities of husbands and fathers - and recognize that there is a societal role in rehabilitation and restoration.

I wanted to write about the experiences of the poor and the black and the rural people of the South.

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.

I do remember the numbers runners, I do remember the poverty and bread lines. Harlem stays with you forever.

In this country, we force millions of people - who are largely black and brown - into a permanent second-class status simply because they once committed a crime.

Crime is out of control in Baltimore City.

Families in Logan, West Virginia, were going through the same struggles as families in the Bronx, San Francisco, and Houston. This was not a West Virginia problem. This is an American problem, and it has to change.

I've been an activist since I was a teenager. I was always curious about what we would now call social justice. I remember just trying to navigate growing up poor in an overpoliced environment with a single mother and a father who was in and out of prison.

I grew up in the city of Detroit, where things were just bad.

My biggest fear growing up was that I would end up in prison. That was the fate of growing numbers of my peers.

When someone is in 'the struggle,' which many of our black communities are in, they are living with a lack of educational facilities, high unemployment, and poor recreational facilities.

We need to do a better job identifying what's contributing to the crime and making sure we hold people accountable in a way that addresses that root cause.

One study conducted in Washington, D.C. indicated that 3 out of 4 black men, and nearly all those living in the poorest neighborhoods could expect to find themselves behind bars at some point in their life.

I was aware that a quarter of the children in the country are born in poverty, and that the condition of public schools in California was disastrous.

A criminal is undoubtedly a poor soul, who is punished for his poverty.

In many large urban areas, the majority of working age African American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. It is viewed as "normal" in ghetto communities to go to prison or jail.