Prison guard unions have become the powerful political forces in some states, particularly California.

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.

We have not ended racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it.

Many offenders are tracked for prison at early ages, labeled as criminals in their teen years, and then shuttled from their decrepit, underfunded inner city schools to brand-new, high-tech prisons.

There are more African Americans under correctional control, in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850 a decade before the civil war began.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs

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.

Mass incarceration is the most pressing racial justice issue of our time.

Once you have been branded a criminal or felon, you are typically trapped for life.

The rules and reasons the political system employs to enforce status relations of any kind, including racial hierarchy, evolve and change as they are challenged.

When our passion for the Great Commission, becomes our search for the Great Politician, we know we're lost.

Just because it is night now it doesn't mean that there is no morning. Just hope for the best and be patient.

The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing.

I'm starting to think this world is just a place for us to learn that we need each other more than we want to admit.

Once you wake up thought in a man you can never put it to sleep again.

Empires and churches are born under the sun of death.

And I really believe that. Asthma is NOT a disability!

A child can be taught not to do certain things, such as touch a hot stove, pull lamps off of tables, and wake Mommy before noon.

You know, it's hard to say what's going to happen in the future. But, if I stay healthy, I think I'll probably play until I'm about 40.

Fiona McCrae is a really amazing editor. Really smart and very astute about what a story needs.