The Criminal Justice System Quotes & Sayings

After a victim has reported a crime to the police, many people believe that the decision whether or not to charge the suspect with a crime, and then prosecute the suspect, is the prerogative of the victim. News media often contribute to this misconception in stories about rape victims by reporting that a victim 'declined to press charges.' In fact, the criminal justice system gives victims no direct say in the matter. It's the police, for the most part, who decide whether a suspect should be arrested, and prosecutors who ultimately determine whether a conviction should be pursued. — Jon Krakauer

The key thing is to ensure that we give the criminal-justice system the tools it needs, so that women's rights are turned into reality. It is not enough to say domestic violence is a crime ?- in order for the laws to be successful, lawyers and courts must have the necessary means to prosecute it. — Jon Kyl

How do you survive for years in prison? You don't think about years, or months, or weeks. You think about today - how to get through it, how to survive it. When you wake up tomorrow, another day is behind you. The days add up; the weeks run together; the months become years. You realize how tough you are, how you can function and survive because you have no choice. — John Grisham

All decisions in the criminal justice system must be determined by the physical and scientific evidence, and the credible testimony corroborated by that evidence, not in response to public outcry. — Robert P. McCulloch

The American people do not want people thumbing their nose at the law. It undercuts the very fabric of our society and the system of civil justice and of criminal justice as well. — Ernest Istook

In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don't. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color "criminals" and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. — Michelle Alexander

And although black civil rights leaders like to point to a supposedly racist criminal justice system to explain why our prisons house so many black men, it's been obvious for decades that the real culprit is black behavior - behavior too often celebrated in black culture. — Jason L. Riley

One in three young African American men is currently under the control of the criminal justice system - in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole - yet mass incarceration tends to be categorized as a criminal justice issue as opposed to a racial justice or civil rights issue (or crisis) — Michelle Alexander

As readers, as people, we might not have the capacity to change the justice system. But as Dylan says in the book, we can change one person's perspective at a time. We can notice. We can speak up. We can teach this generation, my generation, that the way sexual assault is viewed and treated in this country is not okay, so that when it is our turn to step into the shoes of political office and criminal justice, we can continue changing the narrative from a place of power.
And more than anything, we can support. And we can empower. We can love.
We can be better. — Cora Carmack

The U.S. Supreme Court has called free will a "universal and persistent" foundation for our system of law, distinct from "a deterministic view of human conduct that is inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system" (United States v. Grayson, 1978). — Sam Harris

Johnny Cash was a rebel, not only just in the musical sense, but he was somebody who was for the people, and an advocate for labor, for workers, for prisoners, people who have been trapped by the criminal justice system. — Michael Franti

The critical point is that thousands of people are swept into the criminal justice system every year pursuant to the drug war without much regard for their guilt or innocence. The police are allowed by the courts to conduct fishing expeditions for drugs on the streets and freeways based on nothing more than a hunch...and once inside the system, people are often denied attorneys or meaningful representation and pressured into plea bargains by the threat of unbelievably harsh sentences - sentences for minor drug crimes that are higher than many countries impose on convicted murderers. This is the way the roundup works, and it works this way in virtually every major city in the United States. — Michelle Alexander

What a growing number of sociologists have found ought to be common sense: by locking millions of people out of the mainstream legal economy, by making it difficult or impossible for people to find housing or feed themselves, and by destroying familial bonds by warehousing millions for minor crimes, we make crime more - not less - likely in the most vulnerable communities. — Michelle Alexander

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. — Cory Booker

Mostly they all were products of single parents, and in the most tragic category - black boys, with no particular criminal inclinations but whose very lack of direction put them in the crosshairs of the world. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I don't think it's necessary to feel guilty. Because I know that I'm still doing the work that is going to help more sisters and brothers to challenge the whole criminal justice system, and I'm trying to use whatever knowledge I was able to acquire to continue to do the work in our communities that will move us forward. — Angela Davis

How do you request a lawyer? There is no need to be rude, naturally. And most people instinctively recognize that fact. The police officer does not deserve your disrespect, because he or she is only doing his or her job in a criminal justice system that is terribly out of control. Unfortunately, far too many individuals in the real world go in the opposite direction, and for some reason think that they need to be overly polite to the police. They seem to instinctively fear that they might come across sounding a little rude or disrespectful if they make their request sound too confident or unequivocal. — James Duane

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. — Randall Robinson

Our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right for the people they have harmed. Instead, our system of "corrections" is about arm's-length revenge and retribution, all day and all night. — Piper Kerman

It's hard to imagine any group of people being held in less esteem than we are by our clients. The overwhelming majority of them feel that we are either bumbling incompetents
after all if we're otherwise why aren't we in private practice making real money?
or, even worse, actively conspiring with the DA against them as evidenced by the fact that we know and appear to act friendly towards a lot of these people who are prosecuting them. — Sergio De La Pava

So why was I so scared? Because crime is something relative; it's something the government defines and redefines whenever it pleases. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Most people imagine that the explosion in the U.S. prison population during the past twenty-five years reflects changes in crime rates. Few would guess that our prison population leaped from approximately 350,000 to 2.3 million in such a short period of time due to changes in laws and policies, not changes in crime rates. Yet it has been changes in our laws - particularly the dramatic increases in the length of our prison sentences - that have been responsible for the growth of our prison system, not increases in crime. One study suggests that the entire increase in the prison population from 1980 to 2001 can be explained by sentencing policy changes. — Michelle Alexander

The main difference is that the enlightened believe that the poor criminal should be rehabilitated while the righteous believe that the immoral criminal should be locked up in jail. Since almost the only available system of rehabilitation in America is to be locked up in jail, the difference remains highly abstract. — William Ryan

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. — Michelle Alexander

In representing criminal defendants especially guilty ones it is often necessary to take the offensive against the government: to put the government on trial for its misconduct. In law, as in sports, the best defense is often a good offense. The courtroom oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is applicable only to witnesses ... because the American justice system is built on a foundation of not telling the whole entire truth. — Alan Dershowitz

Clive's point was that the criminal justice system is supposed to repair harm, but most prisoners - young, black - have been incarcerated for acts far less emotionally damaging than the injuries we noncriminals perpetrate upon one another all the time - bad husbands, bad wives, ruthless bosses, bullies, bankers. — Jon Ronson

I think the clearest manifestation for anyone who doubts that racism and classism exist in America, all one need do is take a real serious objective look at our criminal justice system. — Tim McDonald

No system of criminal justice can, or should, survive if it comes to depend for its continued effectiveness on the citizens' abdication through unawareness of their constitutional rights. No system worth preserving should have to fear that if an accused is permitted to consult with a lawyer, he will become aware of, and exercise, these rights. — Arthur Goldberg

I represented many of these kids as they become young adults in the criminal justice system when I was a public defender. One way of reaching out is by the mind of experimentation. — Matt Gonzalez

I believe [ ... ] that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. — Neil Gaiman

I went into journalism to learn the craft of writing and to get close to the world I wanted to write about - police and criminals, the criminal justice system. — Michael Connelly

I pretended I had urgent business at the prosecutor's table which, in one of The System's obvious tells, was always millimeters from the jury box. — Sergio De La Pava

Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order. — George Will

In the criminal justice system you see the worst people on their best behavior, unlike the civil system, where the best people behave at their worst. — Edna Buchanan

[M]aterialism clearly poses a bit of a problem for a central tenet of the justice system - namely, that people exert free will in their actions, including their criminal actions. If actions are merely the inevitable consequences of hard-wired brain circuitry - or, pushing the chain of causation back a step, of the genes we inherit from our parents - then the concept of genuine moral culpability becomes untenable. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

By making defense lawyers more central to criminal litigation than they already were and by dramatically enlarging the range of legal claims they could raise on their clients' behalf, Warren's Court increased the gap between rich and poor defendants-and, given the racial distribution of poverty in midcentury America, between black and white defendants as well. Because the time and quality of defense counsel mattered more than before, those defendants who could buy better quality attorneys and pay them to work more hours were more advantaged than before. Relatively speaking, their poorer counterparts grew more disadvantaged. The justice system grew less egalitarian through the Supreme Court's efforts to make it more so.
The — William J. Stuntz

You have young men of color in many communities who are more likely to end up in jail or in the criminal justice system than they are in a good job or in college. And, you know, part of my job, that I can do, I think, without any potential conflicts, is to get at those root causes. — Barack Obama

Given the realities of the U.S. criminal justice system, the prosecution may be unable to salvage this case. But just because that system fails victims on the regular doesn't mean we have to, too. French commentators are already calling for DSK to jump back into the country's presidential race and ride a wave of sympathy into office. Really, the stakes are greater than even that political prize. If we accept the narrative that only perfect women are raped, we risk sacrificing justice not only for this woman, but for victims of sexual assault everywhere. After all, nobody's perfect. — Jaclyn Friedman

When we lose faith in our officers of the law, it harms all of as. It cripples our criminal justice system. It threatens the most vulnerable parts of our community. It allows money and power to subvert justice. — Rob Thomas

The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed. — Michelle Alexander

Isn't Santa just a stand in for the society that has locked them up for formative years? Something that watches and judges, telling them that they got what they deserved based on their behavior? Surely they have to have noticed that Saint Nick, like the judicial system itself, tends to look more favorably upon rich children. He is fat, white, past middle age, and holds all the cards. — Thomm Quackenbush

You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty."
Levin nodded thoughtfully.
"The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either. — Michael Connelly

It is a general misconception that the police exist to protect the public. This is true only in the most generic sense--i.e., once a criminal act is committed, and a suspect caught and convicted, theoretically he is locked up so that he cannot prey on other people. The problem is that someone has to be a victim before the criminal can be taken out of society. And many offenders commit dozens of violent acts before they are taught. This doesn't even take into account the fact that the criminal justice system continually releases the most violent offenders. — Robert A. Waters

As a former attorney general. I have the greatest respect for the criminal justice system. But it is not good at intelligence gathering. — Kelly Ayotte

After reading The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander's stunning work of scholarship, one gains the terrible realization that, for people of color, the American criminal justice system resembles the Soviet Union's gulag - the latter punished ideas, the former punishes a condition. — David Levering Lewis

Terrorism has made our world an integrated community in a new and frightening way. Not merely the activities of our neighbors, but those of the inhabitants of the most remote mountain valleys of the farthest-flung countries of our planet, have become our business. We need to extend the reach of the criminal law there and to have the means to bring terrorists to justice without declaring war on an entire country in order to do it. For this we need a sound global system of criminal justice, so justice does not become the victim of national differences of opinion. We also need, though it will be far more difficult to achieve, a sense that we really are one community, that we are people who recognize not only the force of prohibitions against killing each other but also the pull of obligations to assist one another. This may not stop religious fanatics from carrying out suicide missions, but it will help to isolate them and reduce their support. — Peter Singer

Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty. — Eliot Spitzer

Perhaps it was true a century ago - I deeply regret that it is no longer true - but the United States criminal justice system long ago lost any legitimate claim to the loyal cooperation of American citizens. You cannot write tens of thousands of criminal statutes, including many touching upon conduct that is neither immoral nor dangerous, write those laws as broadly as you can imagine, scatter them throughout the thousands of pages of the United States Code - and then expect decent law-abiding, unsuspecting citizens to cooperate with an investigation into whether they may have violated some law they have never even heard about. The next time some police officer or government agent asks you whether you would be willing to answer a few questions about where you have been and what you have been doing, you must respectfully but very firmly decline. — James Duane

I therefore believe that our system does not have a word for failed trial, and that is where the American public does not realize that our criminal justice system sometimes makes mistakes. — Sam Sheppard

As legal scholar David Cole has observed, "The Court has imposed nearly insurmountable barriers to persons challenging race discrimination at all stages of the criminal justice system."92 The barriers are so high that few lawsuits are even filed, notwithstanding shocking and indefensible racial disparities. — Michelle Alexander

But I have a flash of Good News from the Police Atrocity front, which is heating up in Denver. ... Stand back! Good News is rare in the Criminal Justice System, but every once in a while you find it, and this is one of those times. To wit: the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has formally entered the Appeals trial of young Lisl Auman - the girl who remains locked up in a cell at the Colorado State Prison for the Rest of Her Life with No Possibility of Parole for a bogus crime she was never even Accused of committing. She is a living victim of a cold-blooded political trial that will cast a long shadow on Denver for many years to come. Lisl is the only person ever convicted in the United States for Felony Murder who was in police custody when the crime happened. — Hunter S. Thompson

We have this long history of racism in this country, and as it happens, the criminal justice system has been perhaps the most prominent instrument for administering racism. But the racism doesn't actually come from the criminal justice system. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

It is apparent, if you go back through our history, that the grand juries of the criminal justice system do not value black lives. — William Lacy Clay Jr.

The criminal-justice system is, obviously, the sole source of racial tension in this country [USA] or the key institution to resolving the opportunity gap. It is a part of the broader set of challenges that we face in creating a more perfect union. — Barack Obama

For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death. — James Frey

There is another, more sinister consequence of affirmative action: the carefully engineered appearance of great racial progress strengthens the "colorblind" public consensus that personal and cultural traits, not structural arrangements, are largely responsible for the fact that the majority of young black men in urban areas across the United States are currently under the control of the criminal justice system or branded as felons for life. In — Michelle Alexander

Race determines everything in the criminal justice system — Mark Geragos

One of the most corrosive aspects of the criminal justice system is its toleration of the insanity defense...Legitimate in some few cases, the insanity defense has been rendered farcical through its manipulation by so-called experts. — Robert K. Tanenbaum

Specifically, the growing threat that sexual predators pose to our Nation's children and their families represents an area where our criminal justice system has failed the American people. — Paul Gillmor

Our constitutionally-based criminal justice system places a high value on protecting the innocent. Among its central tenets is the idea that it is better to let a guilty person go free than to convict someone without evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. — Robert Shapiro

The government's rationale here is beautiful in its simplicity. American criminals have constitutional rights not because they are natural-born Americans but precisely because they are criminals. Deportations, however, are not part of the criminal justice system. "Removal proceedings," wrote the circuit judge in the Gutierrez-Berdin case, "are civil, not criminal, and the exclusionary rule does not generally apply to them." So the undocumented alien who kills a room full of Rotarians with an ax has a right to counsel, a phone call, and protection against improper searches. The alien caught crossing the street on his way to work has no rights at all. Strangest — Matt Taibbi

Over the last few years a lot of people have become aware of the inequities in the criminal justice system, right now, with our overall crime rate and incarceration rate both falling, we're at a moment when some good people in both parties, Republicans and Democrats and folks all across the country, are coming up with ideas to make the system work smarter and better. — Barack Obama

American citizens should not lose their constitutional rights because they lack the money to pay for them. — Bernard B. Kerik

Dealing with a simple burglary can require 1,000 process steps and 70 forms to be completed as a case goes through the Criminal Justice System. That can't be right. — Theresa May

All we want is justice for John Crawford and everyone responsible for John Crawford's death should be held responsible, the criminal justice system refused to hold those accountable so the civil system must. — Michael Wright

The relevant question is not whether back then a few extraordinary individuals could overcome a system strongly weighted against them or whether today an admittedly far greater number requiring far less talent can succeed. The real question is whether it's harder for the people in this audience to succeed be they extraordinary, average, or below average. If it is, and I think it obvious that it is, then that's untenable in a country that purports to provide equal opportunity for all. Now of course you'll dispute my claim that it is more difficult to succeed for them. You say the battle's over. I say not only is it not over but you yourself are stationed on the frontline of the battle and have been all these years. This room and the criminal justice system as a whole is the frontline. This is where modern-day segregation lives on. — Sergio De La Pava

Black people are dying in this country because we have a criminal justice system which is out of control, a system in which over 50% of young African-American kids are unemployed, it is estimated that a black baby born today has a one in four chance of ending up in the criminal justice system. — Bernie Sanders

The reason I like the criminal justice system is there aren't Republican or Democrat victims or police officers or prosecutors. It's about respect for the rule of law! — Trey Gowdy

No more self-defeating device could be discovered than the one society has developed in dealing with the criminal. It proclaims his career in such loud and dramatic forms that both he and the community accept the judgment as a fixed description. He becomes conscious of himself as a criminal, and the community expects him to live up to his reputation, and will not credit him if he does not live up to it. — Frank Tannenbaum

Wall Street crime, in part, is a confidence game in which the criminal justice system itself is the mark. — Matt Taibbi

There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice. — Montesquieu

The goal is not to just have rapists expelled from schools. I don't want rapists transferring schools. I don't want them out there, being able to commit these crimes. I want them to go to prison. But if you understand this crime and you understand what happens in the reporting of this crime and the support that a victim does or does not get, you realize that our legislation increases the likelihood that a young woman will go to the police in a timely manner and that the police will investigate and that they will be able to administer real justice in the criminal system. — Claire McCaskill

Seven thousand of them were indicted and arraigned, and then they entered the maw of the criminal justice system - right here - through the gateway into Gibraltar, where the vans were lined up. That was about 150 new cases, 150 more pumping hearts and morose glares, every week that the courts and the Bronx County District Attorney's Office were open. And to what end? The same stupid, dismal, pathetic, horrifying crimes were committed day in and day out, all the same. What was accomplished by assistant D.A.'s, by any of them, through all this relentless stirring of the muck? The Bronx crumbled and decayed a little more, and a little more blood dried in the cracks. The Doubts! One thing was accomplished for sure. The system was fed, and those vans brought in the chow. — Tom Wolfe

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions
poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed
which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.
It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. — Howard Zinn

No one should ever be wrongfully deprived of their rights to liberty and freedom without just cause, yet in the past 25 years alone thousands of people have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to tens of thousands of years in prison. — Bernard B. Kerik

I think the federal government should be doing only what the Constitution says it should be. We don't have authority under the federal Constitution to have a big federal criminal justice system. — Paul Broun

We need to incorporate that age-old concept of redemption into the work that we do in the criminal justice system in California. — Kamala Harris

These are young people who made mistakes that aren't that different than the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made, we have a tendency sometimes to almost take for granted or think it's normal that so many young people end up in our criminal justice system. It's not normal ... What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things. — Barack Obama

One out of three black men are in the criminal justice system in some form. Their despair is beginning to resonate through the entire culture; that is why suburban children want rap music. — Robert Bly

The government is commonly conceptualized as a business. If it is seen as a service industry, taxes can be seen as payment for services provided to the public. Those services can include protection (by the military, the criminal justice system, and regulatory agencies), adjudication of disputes (by the judiciary and other agencies), social insurance (as in Social Security and Medicare and various "safety nets"), and so on. Under — George Lakoff

My heart and passion has always been to reform the criminal justice system. I want to be a public servant, and I wanted to be a prosecutor because I felt it was the best way forward. — Marilyn Mosby

We need to keep making our streets safer and our criminal justice system fairer - our homeland more secure, our world more peaceful and sustainable for the next generation. — Barack Obama

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. — Anna Deavere Smith

Policemen and laws can never replace customs, traditions and moral values as a means for regulating human behavior. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we've become. — D. Todd Christofferson

In order to ensure our criminal justice system is fair and equitable, my office is conducting an immediate assessment of every prosecution within the past 10 years where these officers were involved, this is a shameful incident that the public deserves to have addressed in a meaningful and expeditious manner. — George Gascon

The Supreme Court has now closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias at every stage of the criminal justice process, from stops and searches to plea bargaining and sentencing. The system of mass incarceration is now, for all practical purposes, thoroughly immunized from claims of racial bias. — Michelle Alexander

Walter made me understand why we have to reform a system of criminal justice that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. A system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability, must be changed. Walter's case taught me that fear and anger are a threat to justice; they can infect a community, a state, or a nation and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous. I reflected on how mass imprisonment has littered the national landscape with carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us. — Bryan Stevenson

Acknowledging that a woman's right to be safe from a gender-based attack was a "civil right," I believed, was critically important in changing the American consciousness. When a right reaches the status and categorization of a "civil right," it means the nation has arrived at a consensus that is nonnegotiable. Violence against women would no longer be written off ... Once our criminal justice system
at the local, state and federal levels
recognized these as serious and inexcusable crimes, women could stop blaming themselves. — Joe Biden

In a free and democratic society such as ours, justice should not eternally abrogate one's rights to freedom and liberty, except in the most extreme cases. — Bernard B. Kerik

The civil justice system is a backup system when the criminal justice system fails. — Ralph Nader

For too long, the victims of crime have been the forgotten persons of our criminal justice system. — Ronald Reagan

One might expect that the families of murder victims would be showered with sympathy and support, embraced by their communities. But in reality they are far more likely to feel isolated, fearful, and ashamed, overwhelmed by grief and guilt, angry at the criminal-justice system, and shunned by their old friends. — Eric Schlosser

The criminal justice system should have the authority to determine the immigration status of all criminals, regardless of race or ethnicity, and report illegal immigrants who commit crimes to federal authorities. — Susana Martinez

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. — Jimmy Webb

The fact that more than half of the young black men in any large American city are currently under the control of the criminal justice system (or saddled with criminal records) is not - as many argue - just a symptom of poverty or poor choices, but rather evidence of a new racial caste system at work. — Michelle Alexander

What really drives the battle against law enforcement and punishment is not a commitment to treatment, but the widely held view that, first, we are imprisoning too many people for merely possessing illegal drugs; second, drug and other criminal sentences are too long and harsh, and third, the criminal justice system is unjustly punishing young black men. These are among the great urban myths of our time. — John P. Walters

The criminal justice system is accurately symbolized by a large sculpture that sits at the foot of the United States attorney's building: four metal circles that interlock. The wheels of justice, as it were, frozen in legal and social gridlock. — Jonathan Larson

Once brave politicians and others explain the war on drugs' true cost, the American people will scream for a cease-fire. Bring the troops home, people will urge. Treat drugs as a health problem, not as a matter for the criminal justice system. — Larry Elder

The criminal justice system, like any system designed by human beings, clearly has its flaws. — Ben Whishaw

I've written about illegal immigrants in the United States; I spent a year following migrant farm workers as they were harvesting. I've written about our criminal justice system, and how it treats the victims of crime. I've been working for years now on a book about prisons in America, and I've been going into prisons and traveling around the country and seeing what's going on. — Eric Schlosser