A Quote by Michelle Alexander

The prison-industrial complex employs millions of people directly and indirectly. Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, prison guards, construction companies that build prisons, police, probation officers, court clerks, the list goes on and on. Many predominately white rural communities have come to believe that their local economies depend on prisons for jobs.

Michelle Alexander

Quote Topics

Attorneys Believe Build Clerks Come Communities Companies Complex Construction Court Defense Defense Attorneys Depend Directly Economies Goes Goes On Guards Indirectly Industrial Jobs Judges List Local Local Economies Many Millions Millions Of People Officers People Police Prison Prison Guards Prisons Probation Prosecutors Rural Rural Communities White

Quote Author

Michelle Alexander
American - Writer
Born: October 7, 1967

Most new prison construction has occurred in predominately white, rural communities, and thus a new and bizarre form of segregation has emerged in recent years. Ghetto youth are transferred from their decrepit, underfunded, racially segregated schools to brand-new high-tech prisons located in white rural counties.

Michelle Alexander

One of the reasons that so many people of color and poor people are in prison is that the deindustrialization of the economy has led to the creation of new economies and the expansion of some old ones – I have already mentioned the drug trade and the market for sexual services. At the same time, though, there are any number of communities that more than welcome prisons as a source of employment. Communities even compete with one another to be the site where new prisons will be constructed because prisons create a significant number of relatively good jobs for their residents

Angela Davis

Kids are growing up in communities in which they see their loved ones cycling in and out of prison and in which they are sent the message in countless ways that they, too, are going to prison one way or another. We cannot build healthy, functioning schools within a context where there is no funding available because it's going to building prisons and police forces.

Michelle Alexander

Many other countries have tried this and getting businesses to work in partnership in prisons, in prison and with prison labour, and to actually be able to make an economic return is extremely difficult.

Crispin Blunt

Local prosecutors work alongside local police officers on a regular basis and are therefore conflicted when it comes to prosecuting those same officers. They are under extreme pressure from local police unions and from rank-and-file cops.

Al Sharpton

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

Prison officers face enormous pressure. The levels of violence inside our prisons are too high.

David Lidington

If you talk about the prison-industrial complex, I've fought against the prison-industrial complex when I called for a repeal of the Rockefeller drug laws. The biggest impediment to get the laws changed was the lobbyists. Whether you're talking about healthcare, jobs going overseas, or tax reform, you're always coming up against lobbyists.

Russell Simmons

The war on drugs causes other supplemental crimes to take place because of the original illegality of it. But then again, that's the other reason that they're fighting it is the corporate prisons they have now. Because they've privatized all our prisons, corporations have to make money, and the only way they can make money is, I believe, the prisons have to be at least 80-90 percent full. That's why the United States - which is home of the brave, land of the free - we have more people in prison than any other country in the world.

Jesse Ventura

The de industrialization of the US. economy based on the migration of corporations into third world areas where labor is very cheap and thus more profitable for these companies creates on the one hand conditions in those countries that encourage people to emigrate to the US. in search of a better life. On the other hand, it creates conditions here that send more black people into the alternative economies, the drug economies, women into economies in sexual services, and sends them into the prison industrial complex.

Angela Davis

I believe prisons have emerged as a new frontline in the fight against crime. The fact is, new technology and sophisticated approaches mean that prison walls alone are no longer effective in stopping crime – inside or outside of prison.

David Gauke

People who end up in our prisons tend to come from the most difficult backgrounds. They did not have the parental support as they grew up, as many of us enjoyed, and they struggle when they leave prison.

Chris Grayling

We have a number of brothers left in the prisons, about 15 of them. And for the most part, they're in bad condition. Most of us are getting older, you know. I believe all of them is 60 years or older. They've been in prison for long periods of time. Many of them should have never been in prison at all. They were framed and illegally convicted.

Sekou Odinga

I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The spy boom has been a beautiful windfall for architects, construction companies, IT specialists, and above all defense contractors, enriching thousands of private companies and dozens of local economies hugging the Capital Beltway.