Incarceration Reform Quotes

Yes. And release prisoners who are incarcerated for pot.

Well I certainly have learned and I hope I'm moving on and certainly two years of prison was a terrible punishment.

The first prison I ever saw had inscribed on it CEASE TO DO EVIL: LEARN TO DO WELL; but as the inscription was on the outside, the prisoners could not read it.

I believe it is possible to bring an end to mass incarceration and birth a new moral consensus about how we ought to be responding to poor folks of color and a consensus in support of basic human rights for all. But it is going to take some work.

Free all the prisoners everywhere, all they want is truth and justice, all they need is love and care.

I think it's very important. I've gone into prisons to meditate with inmates. It's something I plan to do with Tim Robbins soon.

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

Hillary Clinton understands that we have to invest in education and jobs for our young people, not more jails or incarceration.

Ninety percent of all prisoners in all jails get out some day. So why not give them a little levity in what's otherwise a very dark life?

The issues which mattered to me as an activist, mainly things like prison reform and AIDS, have less of a chance of getting covered on my show than things I don't have a personal interest in. It's because I don't trust my antenna about being a good storyteller on those subjects, because I know a lot and therefore lose touch with what the average person might find interesting about them.

I really think we were charting a course to having a more sane response to mass incarceration, to drug use, and to understanding that the war on drugs has resulted only in the empowerment of vast criminal enterprises and the destruction of democracies around the world. And all that is coming to a miserable, horrific halt.

We're foolish if we think we're going to end mass incarceration unless we are willing to deal with the reality that huge percentages of poor people are going to remain jobless, locked out of the mainstream economy, unless and until they have a quality education that prepares them well for the new economy. There has got to be much more collaboration between the two movements and a greater appreciation for the work of the advocates in each community. It's got to be a movement that's about education, not incarceration - about jobs, not jails.