Robin Long

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“Sociologists have frequently observed that governments use punishment primarily as a tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of punishment is often unrelated to actual crime patterns.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Segregation is also created and perpetuated by the flood of prisoners who return to ghetto communities...These neighborhoods are a minefield for parolees, for a standard condition of parole is a promise not to associate with felons.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Perhaps one of the greatest harms the criminal justice system has done is persuaded us that we do not know how to solve the problems that arise between and amongst us. We have been taught that our experience is inconsequential in comparison to the evidence the "experts" present, and that the strategies we gravitate towards instinctively--calling each other's families first instead of the police, addressing the underlying causes of people's behavior, requiring people to give back to those they harmed--are somehow not only wrong, but socially irresponsible.”
― Danielle Sered, Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair