Jimmy Carter Quotes

Well, the terrible thing right now, and I don't know the statistics, but there's a growing concern in some communities about how rapidly people are sent from school to jail, how quickly they're put into the criminal justice system. And of course the rapidly growing number of brown people, both men and women, in prison. And this is terrible.

You know and we have about 60 to 70 percent black men in prison today and it's because of the negativity they have in their own hearts.

I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.

We have 2.2 million people in prison. It’s a national disgrace.

We have too many Black men in jail waiting for justice and too many Black women in church waiting for Jesus.

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

The fact that the United States, with less than 5 percent of the world's population incarcerates 25% of the world's prisoners is largly due to manditory minimum sentences.

People are swept into the criminal justice system - particularly in poor communities of color - at very early ages... typically for fairly minor, nonviolent crimes.

If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem.

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

The fate of millions of people—indeed the future of the black community itself—may depend on the willingness of those who care about racial justice to re-examine their basic assumptions about the role of the criminal justice system in our society.

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.

The whole future of America's black community is at risk. One out of every three young black men in Washington, D.C., is under one arm or the other of the criminal justice system. These are the continuing consequences of slavery.

If we continue to tell ourselves the popular myths about racial progress or, worse yet, if we say to ourselves that the problem of mass incarceration is just too big, too daunting for us to do anything about and that we should instead direct our energies to battles that might be more easily won, history will judge us harshly. A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch.

The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world: two million people. One out of every eight prisoners in the world is an African American. We are warehousing people as a profit to shareholders or for benefits to communities that get to host federal prisons. It is modern slavery. The whole future of America's black community is at risk. One out of every three young black men in Washington, D.C., is under one arm or the other of the criminal justice system. These are the continuing consequences of slavery.

The Bureau of Justice reports that one in three black male babies born this century will go to jail or prison - that is an absolutely astonishing statistic. And it ought to be terrorizing to not just to people of color, but to all of us.

We live in a country that talks about being the home of the brave and the land of the free, and we have the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Economic justice is not just something blacks are crying out for; whites are desperate for it, too. But in the public imagination, the face of poverty is black. In all actuality, the face of poverty is white.

Poor people, people of color - especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education.

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

We the people say it loud and clear every Election Day, in high-crime periods as well as peaceful stretches - More of our population needs to be behind bars.

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.

We should not have drug laws or a court system that disproportionately punishes the black community.

Mandatory minimum sentences should be abolished.

No penal or political system which multiplies the population of the prisons at the rate of 10 per cent every year will solve a problem which is growing to be more and more of a danger to the social and moral life of the nation.