Rethinking Incarceration Quotes

“We cannot incarcerate ourselves out of addiction. Addiction is a medical crisis that—when it comes to nonviolent offenders—warrants medical interventions, not incarceration. Decades later, data unequivocally illustrates that this war has been a massive failure. It has not only failed to reduce violent crime, but arrest rates—throughout its tenure—have continuously ascended even when crime rates have descended.”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“While many have depicted the War on Drugs as a Republican initiative, the drug war was a bipartisan effort. This rhetoric of law and order deployed by politicians won elections nationwide, from races for local council seats to the presidency.”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“While many have depicted the War on Drugs as a Republican initiative, the drug war was a bipartisan effort. This rhetoric of law and
order deployed by politicians won elections nationwide, from races for local council seats to the presidency.”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“The church must reckon with the reality that ever since black people were stolen from Africa and trafficked to this land, they have been dehumanized, abused, criminalized, incarcerated, exploited for profit, and governed in distinctively sinister ways. This oppression has been personal, institutional, systemic, and legislative. It has been authorized and sanctioned by our local, state, and federal government. As the church, do we have the wherewithal to confront the austere reality that our national economy has been subsidized by a criminal justice system that is, and has been, predicated on the exploitation of cheap labor extracted from poor, racially profiled people of color?”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“Christians must join the freedom caravan and take part in the ongoing work of reimagining true justice. We can no longer wait until it
is socially expedient. We are called to be a prophetic presence in the world, not merely an echo chamber that resounds once there is no longer any social risk involved in speaking up.”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“Today, it is predicted that nationwide one in three black males and one in six Hispanic males will be incarcerated in their lifetime. We have come to accept this as natural. But why doesn’t our discipleship inspire us to interrogate this belief?”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“Our nation's overcrowded jails, prisons, and detention centers are an indictment of our criminal justice system. It is impossible to visit these institutions and not be struck by the inhumane treatment of the people serving time and the disproportionate number of black and brown bodies confined in cages like animals. These men and women are America's latest crop of strange fruit.”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“As followers of Christ, we must ask what our faith calls us to in this unprecedented era of mass incarceration. Collectively and individually, we must contemplate what bearing witness to the gospel in this critical moment entails.”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“Historically, as unjust laws have brought death, oppression, and injustice, far too many Christians have acquiesced to a patriotic doctrine of unquestioning allegiance to law and order. I raise this point in part because it is so easy to forget that if Mary and Joseph had blindly followed the law, Jesus would have been executed at birth—as would have Moses. Jesus embodied God’s heart for restoration. Jesus came to save, redeem, and restore those who are separated from God and their community because of their sin. But Jesus also came to remove the stones of judgment from the hands of religious people who impede the path of restoration for those who have stumbled along the way.”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“In the groundbreaking book 'The New Jim Crow' Michelle Alexander defines our prison system as a method of racially charged social control that creates 'a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society."...Honing in on how the War on Drugs has depleted the black community, Alexander notes that 'in at least fifteen states, blacks are admitted to prison on drug charges at a rate from twenty to fifty-seven times greater than that of white men.' However, in spite of needed policy reforms. Alexander ultimately concludes that 'all of the needed reforms have less to do with failed policies than a deeply flawed public consensus, one that is indifferent, at best, to the experience of poor people of color.' As a pastor, this haunted me. It lingered, and I kept thinking, If anyone should be leading the charge, demonstrating what a morally and ethically rooted public consensus consists of, it should be-it must be-the church! But as someone who has ministered in some of the cities most ravaged by mass incarceration (Atlanta, Chicago, and Oakland), I lamentably confess that we have failed to do this. Furthermore, I can attest that the church-broadly speaking-is still eerily silent, seven years later.”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“While the drug war is undoubtedly a primary driver of our nation's incarceration explosion, it is inaccurate to depict it as the independent impetus of mass incarceration. The War on Drugs is only one of five pipelines currently funneling people into prison, jails, and detention centers nationwide. The other four carceral conduits are the crackdown on immigration offenses, decreased funding for mental health, private prisons and detention centers, and the school-to-prison pipeline.”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores