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Prison Industrial Complex Quotes

Browse 19 quotes about Prison Industrial Complex.

Prison Industrial Complex Quotes

“Despite claims that these radical policy changes were driven by fiscal conservatism...the reality is that government was not reducing the amount of money devoted to the management of the urban poor. It was radically altering what the funds would be used for....Funding that had once been once used for public housing was being redirected to prison construction.”

PovertyRacismAusterityMass IncarcerationPrison Industrial Complex
Book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
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“The vast majority of states continue to withhold the right to vote when prisoners are released on parole. Even after the term of punishment expires, some states deny the right to vote for a period ranging from a number of years to the rest of one’s life. This is far from the norm in other countries—like Germany, for instance, which allows (and even encourages) prisoners to vote. In fact, about half of European countries allow all incarcerated people to vote, while others disqualify only a small number of prisoners from the polls. Prisoners vote either in their correctional facilities or by some version of absentee ballot in their town of previous residence. Almost all of the countries that place some restrictions on voting in prison are in Eastern Europe, part of the former Communist. No other country in the world disenfranchises people who are released from prison in a manner even remotely resembling the United States. In fact, the United Nations Human Rights Committee has charged that U.S. disenfranchisement policies are discriminatory and violate international law.”

RacismDiscriminationInequalityJustice SystemPrison Industrial Complex
Book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
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“I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there, in prison, that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My home made education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.”

HopeReadingRaceEducationBooksRacismPrisonPrison Industrial Complex
Book:The Autobiography of Malcolm X
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“119When you bring together the national security state and the military-industrial complex, when you bring together the prison-industrial complex and all the profits that flow from it, when you bring together the corporate media multiplex that don’t want to allow for serious dialogue... and then, when you bring together the Wall Street oligarchs and the corporate plutocrats, and they tell any person or any group, 'If you speak the truth, we’ll shoot you down like a dog and dehumanize you the way we did to dehumanize the brothers in Attica,' the only thing that will keep you going is you better have some love in your heart for the people.”

PeopleLoveTruthOppressionMilitary Industrial ComplexPrison Industrial Complex
Author:Cornel West
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“when you bring together the national security state and the military-industrial complex, when you bring together the prison-industrial complex and all the profits that flow from it, when you bring together the corporate media multiplex that don’t want to allow for serious dialogue... and then, when you bring together the Wall Street oligarchs and the corporate plutocrats, and they tell any person or any group, 'If you speak the truth, we’ll shoot you down like a dog and dehumanize you the way we did to dehumanize the brothers in Attica,' the only thing that will keep you going is you better have some love in your heart for the people.”

PeopleLoveTruthMilitary Industrial ComplexPrison Industrial Complex
Author:Cornel West
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“With respect to parole, in 1980, only 1 percent of all prison admissions were parole violators. Twenty years later, more than one third (35 percent) of prison admissions resulted from parole violations. To put the matter more starkly: About as many people were returned to prison for parole violations in 2000 as were admitted to prison in 1980 for all reasons. Of all parole violators returned to prison in 2000, only one-third were returned for a new conviction; two-thirds were returned for a technical violation such as missing appointments with a parole officer, failing to maintain employment, or failing a drug test.”

Criminal JusticeParoleMass IncarcerationPrison Industrial Complex
Book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
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“... all over the world the institution of the prison serves as a place to warehouse people who represent major social problems... prison serves as an institution that consolidates the state's inability and refusal to address the most pressing social problems of this era.”

PalestinePrison Industrial ComplexBlack Liberation
Book:Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement
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“The existing criminal justice model poses two main questions in the face of social harm: Who did it? How can we punish them? (And increasingly, how can we make money from it?). Creating safe and healthy communities requires a different set of questions: Who was harmed? How can we facilitate healing? How can we prevent such harm in the future? --S. Lamble”

Transformative JusticePrison Industrial ComplexPrison Abolition
Book:Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex
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“When a loved one is incarcerated, it's like an atom bomb falls on them, obliterating everything in an instant. Their freedom, their movement, their livelihood, gone. But the bomb's shock waves spread out and envelop close family and friends too. The prison industrial complex eats incarcerated people as the main course but also feasts on their relatives, relationships, and communities. Its appetite is voracious.”

RelationshipsFamiliesIncarcerationPrisonersPrisonsPrison Industrial ComplexJails
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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“The very existence of the prison forecloses the kinds of discussions that we need in order to imagine the possibility of eradicating these behaviors. Just send them to prison. Just keep on sending them to prison. Then of course, in prison they find themselves within a violent institution that reproduces violence.”

AbolitionMass IncarcerationPrison Industrial ComplexPrison AbolitionCarceral State
Book:Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement
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“As if they are a mountaineer climbing across the great slopes of Mount Everest, meth monkeys take quite the health risk. Their minds become mush due to sleep deprivation. Like pillows with way too many hours of sleep invested into them, these minds exhaust themselves and become overworked. Like that of old television shows, their minds become reruns on repeat.”

JesusChurchPrisonAddictionRecoveryRecovery QuotesMethamphetaminePrison Industrial ComplexDrugs Addiction
Author:James Allen Firth
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“In Waquant's words: "Racial division was a consequence, not a precondition of slavery, but once it was instituted it became detached from its initial function and acquired a social potency all its own." After the death of slavery, the idea of race lived on/”

RaceRacismSocial JusticeWhite SupremacyPrison ReformPrison Industrial Complex
Book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
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