Eighty-two percent of prisoners in the United States are high-school dropouts. A high-school dropout between the ages of 30 and 34 is two-thirds more likely to be in jail, or to have been in jail, or to be dead.

Getting smart on crime' does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes.

We need to incorporate that age-old concept of redemption into the work that we do in the criminal justice system in California.

Everybody will make mistakes, and for some that mistake will rise to the level of being a crime.

I believe that a child going without an education is a crime.

You don't have to care about children to care about children. One of the things that I talk a lot about is the fact of the importance of third-grade reading level. By the end of third grade, if the child is not at reading level, it'll drop off. They never catch up.

I'm one of the luckiest people on Earth.