Chesa Boudin Quotes

In terms of closing Rikers, we have to close Rikers, but we have to ensure that we're not just taking - that we're not continuing to incarcerate the same level of people. It doesn't do us much good if we close Rikers and then take that same amount of people and just distribute them to be incarcerated elsewhere.

Mandatory prison terms is easy to say, but where are we going to put people?

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 have never articulated a specific number, but I think a nation as great as we are, that professes to favor freedom and liberty, that we would find a way to evidence that in our criminal justice system by achieving what we know we can achieve: a reduction in crime, a reduction in taxpayer expense, and a reduction in the prison population.

The status quo tough-on-crime policies of the '90s and 2000s are not working and are not popular. And it provides me with hope about the possibilities for San Francisco and this whole country in terms of moving away from our dependence on prisons and jails to solve social problems.

What we're doing in San Francisco and what we're doing with other criminal justice partners across the state and across the country is anything but indiscriminate. We are being careful. We are being focused and surgical in our efforts to decrease the jail population.

Our system never treated the failure of prison as a reason not to try more prison.

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

First of all, I didn't suggest that we should simply get rid of all prisons.

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

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

If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem.

I want to stop piling people into prisons and stop branding people with a felony for a personal weakness.

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

Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law enforcement reason.

Keeping them behind bars does little to reduce crime, but it does a lot to tear apart families, our prisons and our jails are now our mental health institutions.

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.

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.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

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

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

No funding for alternative sentencing instead of more prisons.

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.

We can agree that keeping serious criminals in prison is an effective means of preserving public safety, but we must also recognize that the axiom of 'putting people in jail and throwing away the key' does not apply to all offenders universally and can actually be counterproductive.

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.