Michelle Alexander - All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. A

All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking ***** in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world.

- Michelle Alexander

source: Michelle Alexander (2013). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, p.215, The New Press

topic: Mistake, Marijuana, Law, Speed Limits, Living Room, People Make Mistakes, Unheard