Peter Moskos > Quotes

“Even if crack cocaine laws and mandatory minimum sentencing were not racist in their original intentions, the war on drugs is a de facto war against poor blacks. Outcomes that so negatively affect African Americans should place the moral burden on those who continue to advocate imprisonment as our national drug policy. Communities cannot survive when incarceration is the norm.”
― Peter Moskos, Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District

“Nobody really understood the statistical universe. It was all just shoveling it down the line. Then we had a check for things like subset abuse. Like rape-one is a subset of all rape, so you can’t have more rape-ones than you have rapes.”
― Peter Moskos, Back from the Brink: Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop

“From 1925 to 1975, despite some variance, about 1 in 1,000 Americans was imprisoned at any given time. In 1975, there were approximately 200,000 prisoners. Thirty-two years later, after thirty-two years of drug war, there are 2.3 million behind bars—1 in every 130 Americans.100 Canada, by comparison, imprisons 1 in every 750 people. Every country in Western Europe imprisons still fewer. Pick any country and we lock up more people. America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. This, in Eric Schlosser’s coinage, is the prison-industrial complex:”
― Peter Moskos, Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District

“After six months in the academy, trainees learn to: Respect the chain of command and their place on the bottom of that chain. Sprinkle “sir” and “ma’am” into casual conversation. Salute. Follow orders. March in formation. Stay out of trouble. Stay awake. Be on time. Shine shoes.”
― Peter Moskos, Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District