Introduction:
The topic of incarceration is both sobering and complex, shedding light on various facets of society, from justice systems to human rights. Throughout history, individuals, scholars, activists, and policymakers have grappled with the implications and consequences of imprisonment. Whether exploring the moral, social, or psychological dimensions, quotes on incarceration offer profound insights into the realities faced by those behind bars and the broader implications for communities at large. These quotes serve as poignant reminders of the challenges and injustices within systems of confinement, sparking conversations and advocacy for reform and empathy.
In this curated collection of incarceration quotes, you’ll encounter perspectives from diverse voices, spanning different epochs and cultures. From renowned thinkers to those with firsthand experience, these quotes encapsulate the spectrum of emotions and thoughts associated with incarceration. Whether it’s commentary on the harshness of punishment, the resilience of the human spirit, or calls for systemic change, each quote offers a glimpse into the complexities of confinement and its impact on individuals and society. Scroll down to explore these compelling quotes and consider how you might utilize them whether for reflection, education, or advocacy.
Many states can no longer afford to support public education, public benefits, public services without doing something about the exorbitant costs that mass incarceration have created. Bryan Stevenson
Mass incarceration is the result of small, distinct steps, each of whose significance becomes more apparent over time, and only when considered in light of later events. James Forman, Jr.
I’m a part of major league rugby. We had a league meeting to decide what to do with anthem protests, and even though I personally agree with what they say they are protesting as inequality and judicial system and incarceration rates among minorities, we decided all should stand and respect every national anthem. John Layfield
There is much that makes one pause in ‘If This is a Man’, the record of Levi’s 11-month incarceration in Auschwitz, much one cannot read without needing to lay aside the book and inhale the breath of common air. Howard Jacobson
What I support is a whole different approach with regard to drug use, and that is spending less money on the prosecution and incarceration side and more money on prevention and education, which I know works. Rob Portman
Just as incarceration has come to define the lives of low-income black men, eviction is defining the lives of low-income black women. Matthew Desmond
My incarceration was actually a positive thing from the beginning. I needed a gimmick to get my act going again, it gave me material. Tommy Chong
When reporters are in the business of obtaining hard facts that service the free flow of information, journalists should have a right to obtain that information without fear of personal ruin or incarceration. Rod Lurie
That hunger of the flesh, that longing for ease, that terror of incarceration, that insistence on tribal honour being obeyed: all of that exists, and it exists everywhere. Ben Kingsley
We have over 500,000 illegal immigrants living in Arizona. And we simply cannot sustain it. It costs us a tremendous amount of money of course in health care, in education, and then, on top of it all, in incarceration. And the federal government doesn’t reimburse us on any of these things. Jan Brewer
As you may know, I’m the co-founder of a political organization called Real Justice. Our goal is to help elect progressive, reform-minded prosecutors and district attorneys that are committed to ending mass incarceration. Shaun King
My experience and research has led me to the regrettable conclusion that our system of mass incarceration functions more like a caste system than a system of crime prevention or control. Michelle Alexander
The school-to-prison pipeline – the disproportionality that exists in handing out school discipline in schools to Black and Brown students for simple infractions – pushes kids out of classrooms and into our ever-growing system of mass incarceration. Jamaal Bowman
Some of our system of mass incarceration really has to be traced back to the law-and-order movement that began in the 1950s, in the 1960s. Michelle Alexander
When we have people whose lives are being turned around in a negative way because they’re incarcerated for either too long or for crimes that don’t need incarceration, that’s a moral issue for me. Tony Evers
We rarely know what motivates somebody in their work, and it’s usually a particular moment in their life. For me, that moment is my brother’s incarceration and the ways in which this country has decided to neglect, abuse, and sometimes torture people with severe mental illness, especially if they’re black. Patrisse Cullors
In the history of postwar German writing, for the first 15 or 20 years, people avoided mentioning political persecution – the incarceration and systematic extermination of whole peoples and groups in society. Then, from 1965, this became a preoccupation of writers – not always in an acceptable form. W. G. Sebald
I support defunding the police – particularly the militarization of our police force and reallocating those resources toward public health. And not just health care but mental health support, affordable housing, education, alternatives to incarceration, non-emergency responses to those who might be in mental distress. Jamaal Bowman
Mass incarceration is a massive system of racial and social control. Michelle Alexander
I am still committed to building a movement to end mass incarceration, but I will not do it with blinders on. If all we do is end mass incarceration, this movement will not have gone nearly far enough. Michelle Alexander
There is no cost difference between incarceration and an Ivy League education; the main difference is curriculum. Paul Hawken
We’ve been addicted to incarceration as a primary response for decades, whether or not it’s a good use of resources, whether or not it’s humane, whether or not it is effective at keeping us safe, rehabilitating or healing victims. Chesa Boudin
School desegregation is associated with higher graduation rates, greater employability, higher earnings, and decreased rates of incarceration. Clint Smith
We long to have a home where civil freedoms are respected, where our children will not be subject to mass surveillance, abuse of human rights, political censorship and mass incarceration. Joshua Wong
In a sense, mass incarceration has emerged as a far more extreme form of physical and residential segregation than Jim Crow segregation. Rather than merely shunting people of color to the other side of town, people are locked in literal cages – en masse. Michelle Alexander
After spending time with police officers on ride-alongs, meeting with politicians on the state and federal level and grass roots organizations fighting for human rights, it’s clear that our criminal justice system is still crippling communities of color through mass incarceration. Malcolm Jenkins
Incarceration and recidivism rates high? Providing people an incentive to stay out of jail while also providing them some level of economic security while they get back on their feet – both accomplished by a UBI – sounds like a great way to solve that problem. Andrew Yang
One of the things about incarceration is that you’re deprived. You lose all of your identity, and then its given back one day, and you’re ill-equipped to actually embrace it and work it. Susan Burton
The fact that more than 50 percent of Americans have an immediate family member either currently or formerly incarcerated tells you a lot about just how defining a feature of American culture incarceration has become. Chesa Boudin
Dick Gregory used every syllable, every metaphor, every joke, every march, every incarceration, every hour of his life, to embarrass this country into providing a more perfect, perfect union. Joe Morton
We have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. ‘America, land of liberty and freedom?’ You know, that’s baloney. More than 2 million Americans are behind bars now. Communist China has four times the population and they have 1.5 million people behind bars. Gary Johnson
The greatest myth about mass incarceration is that it has been driven by crime and crime rates. It’s just not true. Michelle Alexander
As a society, we’re failing. In so many ways. Such high incarceration rates of underrepresented minorities ultimately means we’re missing out on great potential from black and Latino communities. Yes, there’s immense talent brewing even within the most impoverished neighborhoods. Talent is universal, but opportunity is not. Christine Tsai
My family never missed a visit in eight months, ever. I cried coming out. I didn’t cry coming in. There’s a big difference. I believe that God put me there for a reason, Incarceration is serious. Foxy Brown
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Many of those people deserve to be in prison; however, some of them do not. Rand Paul
We have a mass incarceration among minorities that is disproportionate to our population. It’s a travesty what’s going on with our mass incarceration specifically of minorities. John Layfield
We have determined as a society, as a country, as a people, that the incarceration and the supervision and the specific fines for a particular crime are that person’s debt to society. Loretta Lynch
Mass incarceration and its never-ending human toll will be with us until we come to see that no crime justifies permanent civic death. James Forman, Jr.
The appalling rate of incarceration among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples demands we create justice targets under the Closing the Gap framework. Bill Shorten
The sunlight ranges over the universe, and at incarnation we step out of it into the twilight of the body, and see but dimly during the period of our incarceration; at death we step out of the prison again into the sunlight, and are nearer to the reality. Annie Besant
Australia has a very big history of incarceration. What does that mean to us? What does it mean that we came over to a country that’s not necessarily ours and filled it with white prisoners? Yael Stone
Incarceration didn’t change me. In many ways, incarceration galvanized me. The totality of the experience helped me. Roger Avary
The prison industrial complex, to put it in its crassest term, is a system of industrial mass incarceration. So there’s what you call bureaucratic thrust behind it. It’s hard to shut off because politicians rely upon the steady flow of jobs to their district that the prison system and its related industries promise. Eugene Jarecki
I believe this system of mass incarceration would have Dr. King turning in his grave. There’s no doubt in my mind that Dr. King would be doing everything in his power to build a movement to end mass incarceration in the United States; a movement for education, not incarceration. Michelle Alexander
Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually. George Soros
While mass incarceration is a national crisis, it was built locally. James Forman, Jr.
I want to look at the community I came from and what role incarceration has played there. Roger Ross Williams
The removal of people of Japanese descent from their homes and their incarceration in camps were executed with the same sort of political calculus of fear and bigotry that Mr. Trump is using to redefine American immigration policy. Michiko Kakutani
It makes a lot more sense for us to be investing in jobs and education rather than jails and incarceration. Bernie Sanders
What was most important, for me, is that I could share what I experience as a young person – in particular, what impact incarceration and policing had on my life and my family’s life. Patrisse Cullors
As a general rule, I don’t like to see laws that allow for the arrest and incarceration of people based on a sort of subjective standard. Kat Timpf
Incarceration is supposed to keep the community safe from your behavior. Judy Sheindlin
America, the self-described greatest nation on Earth, has the highest incarceration rate on the planet. W. Kamau Bell
For millions of Americans, the continued incarceration of Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos is a grim reminder of everything that has gone wrong with border security. Mike Gallagher
Seeing the B-52s dropped from planes, watching the burning of civilians with Agent Orange, reading about the incarceration of Vietnamese militants in cages only big enough for tigers made me furious. Susan Rosenberg
I love the story of ‘Lamborghini Doors,’ a record with Meek Mill and myself – it came together when I went to visit him during his incarceration. Rick Ross
Unless we address those that are leaving prisons, we can’t begin to repair the damage of mass incarceration and make our communities whole and healthy once again. Susan Burton
Mass incarceration will have to be dismantled the same way it was constructed: piecemeal, incrementally and, above all, locally. James Forman, Jr.
A New Way of Life is a safe house that women can come to after they’re released from prison in South Los Angeles. It’s a place for women to detox the trauma, the torture of incarceration, be welcomed and embraced and live and begin their new path to – if it’s recovery or receiving mental health services, go back to school, get their children back. Susan Burton
Conservatives will fight hard to preserve the institutions of mass incarceration and police brutality. Because they don’t see themselves as victims of these things, but as benefactors, they will fight hard to preserve the status quo against a reform candidate. Shaun King
A neoliberal disaster is one who generates a mass incarceration regime, who deregulates banks and markets, who promotes chaos of regime change in Libya, supports military coups in Honduras, undermines some of the magnificent efforts in Haiti of working people, and so forth. Cornel West
Order rooted in and maintained and restored by fear, intimidation, brutality and incarceration is immoral and untenable. Justice is order’s intended soul mate. But serving justice is twice as hard as serving fear. Jason Whitlock
Over its 40 years, Muppets on ‘Sesame Street’ have addressed AIDS, divorce, a parent’s deployment overseas, and a death in the family. But the show is addressing incarceration in a way it didn’t used to: by bringing the show directly to the kids and families it wants to reach. Elizabeth Flock
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. Michelle Alexander
Exacerbating the problem of mass incarceration is that, even after someone is released from prison, the stigma of a misdemeanor or felony conviction makes finding gainful employment difficult, if not impossible. Stan Van Gundy
I can’t say there was a last straw because there have been so many straws, but certainly the horrors at the border, separating children from their parents, the torture, the kidnapping and the incarceration of them in cages was unthinkable, unbearable. When an opportunity presented itself to me to do something, I needed to take a leap. Mary L. Trump
Even though the Clintons started mass incarceration, which my brother is a victim of, things are going to change, though. Somebody made them do that. Ty Dolla Sign
God blessed us with all this money, so why not take the money and put it into my brother’s case? Talk about social and racial injustice in our country, and mass incarceration in our country? Ty Dolla Sign
Exposing police lying is difficult largely because it is rare for the police to admit their own lies or to acknowledge the lies of other officers. This reluctance derives partly from the code of silence that governs police practice and from the ways in which the system of mass incarceration is structured to reward dishonesty. Michelle Alexander
The great gift of ‘Incarceration Nations’ is that, by introducing a wide range of approaches to crime, punishment, and questions of justice in diverse countries – Rwanda, South Africa, Brazil, Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore, Australia and Norway – it forces us to face the reality that American-style punishment has been chosen. Michelle Alexander
The greatest stain upon this great Australian nation’s character, without any question, is the great gaps that exist between our Aboriginal brothers and sisters in terms of their health, their education, their living conditions, their incarceration rates and life expectancy. It’s a great stain. Bob Hawke
Since the end of the 1970s, something has gone profoundly wrong in America. Inequality has soared. Educational progress slowed. Incarceration rates quintupled. Family breakdown accelerated. Median household income stagnated. Nicholas Kristof
Incarceration rates, especially black incarceration rates, have soared regardless of whether crime is going up or down in any given community or the nation as a whole. Michelle Alexander
So many white people don’t want to talk about race; it’s uncomfortable. Many reason that slavery happened more than a century ago, and people alive today had nothing to do with it. But the particulars of these stories, from slavery to segregation to civil rights and mass incarceration, are at the marrow of life in America today. Beth Macy
I live in New Orleans, because it’s the strangest city in the United States. It has the highest murder rate in the country, the highest incarceration rate, and often we have to boil our drinking water, but there’s nowhere else remotely like it. Nathaniel Rich
If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out. Matthew Desmond
Hillary Clinton understands that we have to invest in education and jobs for our young people, not more jails or incarceration. Bernie Sanders
When we say, ‘Look, Donald Trump was a friend to hip hop back in the day; so was Bill Clinton,’ It doesn’t mean that because he was a friend to hip hop back in the day, that the same Bill Clinton wasn’t at the lead of this mass incarceration of African Americans today. KRS-One
We loathe mass incarceration. We loathe police brutality. But most of us have absolutely no idea how to address the critical flaws in our justice system. Shaun King
The day-to-day discomforts of prison life, combined with the big-picture realities of mass incarceration, do not add up to a party. W. Kamau Bell
As a society we’re always so quick and able to spend money on lawyers for someone for incarceration, but we don’t make the corresponding commitment to the preventative components of it. Matt Gonzalez
The whole reason behind my album ‘Free TC’ is seeing all that police brutality, injustice, mass incarceration. Ty Dolla Sign
Illegal immigration costs taxpayers $45 billion a year in health care, education, and incarceration expenses. Ric Keller
The success of the few does not excuse the caste-like system that exists for many. In fact, black exceptionalism – the high-profile, highly visible examples of the black success – actually serves to justify and rationalize mass incarceration. Michelle Alexander
The mass incarceration going on in this country and with my people is crazy. Ty Dolla Sign
The system of mass incarceration depends almost entirely on the cooperation of those it seeks to control. Michelle Alexander
You have to know the forces that are against you and that are trying to break you down. We talk about the problems facing the black community: the decimation of the black family; the mass incarceration of the black man; we’re talking about the brutality against black people from the police. The educational system. D’Angelo
For those of you that don’t know, the reason I named my album ‘Free TC’ is because my lil’ brother is named TC. He’s locked up for something that he didn’t do, and what I’m trying to do is just raise awareness around the whole mass incarceration thing going on in our country, especially with our people. Ty Dolla Sign
Now that private prison companies have found that they can make a killing on mass incarceration, these private prison companies are now in the business of building detention centers for suspected illegal immigrants. Michelle Alexander
There is something deeply wrong with a political culture which only wants to talk about incarceration in the aftermath of a tragedy. Ash Sarkar
In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so. Michelle Alexander
We long to have a home where civil freedoms are respected, where our children will not be subject to mass surveillance, abuse of human rights, political censorship and mass incarceration. We stand with all the free peoples of the world and hope you stand with us in our quest for justice and freedom. Joshua Wong
Not graduating high school on time leads to fewer chances of attending college and obtaining good paying jobs, and creates instead higher chances of incarceration and unemployment. Al Sharpton
The American incarceration of Sheikh Rahman was a hot-button issue for al Qaeda for many years. Peter Bergen
We know that the environment and political information is important, and we expose and teach the women about some of the environmental factors that lead to their incarceration. Susan Burton
As described in ‘The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,’ the cyclical rebirth of caste in America is a recurring racial nightmare. Michelle Alexander
I think my whole life has been shaped by my childhood incarceration in America’s concentration camps. George Takei
Individual children are separated from their parents only when those parents cross the border illegally and are arrested. We can’t have children with parents who are in incarceration. Alex Azar
