Prison

"At the risk of quoting Mephistopheles I repeat: Welcome to hell. A hell erected and maintained by human-governments, and blessed by black robed judges. A hell that allows you to see your loved ones, but not to touch them. A hell situated in America's boondocks, hundreds of miles away from most families. A white, rural hell, where most of the captives are black and urban. It is an American way of death."

"PRISON, n. A place of punishments and rewards. The poet assures us that --"

"To say I was shocked, stunned, or humiliated on entering the penitentiary would not be the truth. It would not be true in nine cases out of any ten. It would be true if a man were picked up on the street and taken directly to a penitentiary, but that isn't done He is first thrown into a dirty, lousy, foul-smelling cell in some city prison, sometimes with an awful beating in the bargain, and after two or three days of that nothing in the world can chock, stun, or humiliate him. He is actually happy to get removed to a county jail where he can perhaps get rid of the vermin and wash his body. By that time, convicted, and sentenced, he has learned from other prisoners just what the penitentiary is like and just what to do and what to expect. You start doing time the minute the handcuffs are on your wrists. The first day you are locked up is the hardest, and the last day the easiest. There comes a feeling of helplessness when the prison gates wallow you up - cut you off from the sunshine and flowers out in the world - but that feeling soon wears away if you have guts. Some men despair. I am sure I did not."

"Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilisation."

"Changi became my university instead of my prison. … Among the inmates there were experts in all walks of life — the high and the low roads. I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting, but most of all I learned the art of surviving."

"Every honest man in prison is tenfold more dangerous than fire burning near fire-damp. The majesty of law is defiled when the innocent are punished deliberately with the guilty."

"While there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

"And a bird-cage, sir," said Sam. "Veels vithin veels, a prison in a prison."

"A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside; and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact, in one of the spice islands of the Indian Ocean."

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

"Mr. Emerson visited Thoreau at the jail, and the meeting between the two philosophers must have been interesting and somewhat dramatic. The account of the meeting was told me by Miss Maria Thoreau [Henry Thoreau's aunt]—"Henry, why are you here?" Waldo, why are you not here?"

"The world’s prison population is estimated at around 11 million with rates of incarceration ranging from 698 per 100,000 population in the United States to as low as 16 per 100,000 in the Central African Republic. In the US, there are approximately 2.2 million people incarcerated, representing an estimated 24% of the world’s proportion of incarcerated individuals. Estimates as of mid-May 2020 in the US demonstrate that state jails hold 1,230,000 individuals, 625,000 are detained in local jails, and 225,000 in federal jails and prisons. Mass incarceration policies have important collateral damage to prisoners, their families and communities. Investing in social capital, community-building practices, public safety strategies, and violence prevention initiatives represent a more cost-effective approach. In communities with steady economic and social breakdown, many groups including African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and white working class without a bachelor’s degree are caught in this web of compound and expanding disadvantage. Worldwide, in most settings, poor urban communities experience the highest rates of both incarceration and recidivism."

"Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?"

"I will go to prison. I will be in the Gazette. I will move to a meaner situation, or anything else that is necessary."

"The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves."

"Roy Tillman: It's funny. Prison is the way the world should be. The natural order. No apology. Men separated by race, races stacked with the strong on top, you fuck the weak, you kill your rivals, sleep with one eye open."

"Prisons are epicentres for infectious diseases because of the higher background prevalence of infection, the higher levels of risk factors for infection, the unavoidable close contact in often overcrowded, poorly ventilated, and unsanitary facilities, and the poor access to health-care services relative to that in community settings. Infections can be transmitted between prisoners, staff and visitors, between prisons through transfers and staff cross-deployment, and to and from the community."

"Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering."

"(AG: ...you said, “I think we have to know that prison is part of society”) SJ: …in order for so many people to be incarcerated, they have to convince the population that this is no part of their life, that prison is outside of their society, that it’s not something they should be concerned about and fighting about and supporting, that it is other than the life we are living. But in fact, in my view, the fact that so many people are in prison in the United States not only shapes the lives of millions—the families, etc.—but it means that the whole society is much more repressive, because the standards of prison are constantly imprisoning the rest of us in crucial respects. But the number, the millions of people, of children who are growing up with a parent inside and who will themselves be part—you know, Mumia’s son is in prison. You know, I mean, the thing is absolutely mind-blowing, the kind of brutality that the prison system has launched in the society, generally. It’s not the only force of repression, but it is one serious source of repression."

"What I was to encounter at Greensville defied anything that I’d expected. The pigs had a refined system and license for brutalizing prisoners. I was not to understand the magnitude of the situation until a few days after being there. The pigs had a tier of handpicked proxy prisoners, whom they used to violently suppress those who got out of line. The ringleader – I’ll call him Pumpkin – was a career con with a reputation for butchering other prisoners. He had a trustee job (all trustees were similarly selected). Pumpkin was allowed by the pigs to keep weapons on his person. Part of the mental terror game was that while he was out cleaning (everyone knew he was a pig hit man and stayed armed), the pigs would bring others out around him in handcuffs. ... The next day or so the pigs would put them on the exercise yard together, remove everyone’s handcuffs except the target’s (they’d put five to seven prisoners in each pen), and allow them to mob attack the still handcuffed target. Or if they wanted him butchered, he’d be unhandcuffed and left to contend unarmed against a knife-wielding Pumpkin."

"They’ve put me in a cell on ma own. I’ve gorra TV. I watched Poltergeist on ma first night on this wing. Ya hear people goin’ on about how they shun’t have TVs in prison an’ that, how “it’s like a holiday for ’em”. Well, I’m not bein’ funny, but if I paid for a holiday an’ ended up here I’d be writin’ a very strongly worded letter to Thomas Cook."

"The law of nations knows of no distinction of color, and if an enemy of the United States should enslave and sell any captured persons of their army, it would be a case for the severest retaliation, if not redressed upon complaint."

"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage, Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage."

"Happiness is a prison, Evey. Happiness is the most insidious prison of all."

"I'm too pretty to go to jail."

"Show me a prison, show me a jail Show me a pris'ner whose face has grown pale And I'll show you a young man With many reasons why There but for fortune, go you or I."

"Over the past three decades, the number of prison inmates in the United States has increased by more than 600%, leaving it the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. During this time, incarceration has changed from a punishment reserved primarily for the most heinous offenders to a much greater range of crimes and a much larger segment of the population."

"Doubles grilles à gros cloux, Triples portes, forts verroux, Aux âmes vraiment méchantes Vous représentez l'enfer: Mais aux âmes innocentes Vous n'etes que du bois, des pierres, du fer."

"The newspapers are gonna be tough on you. And prison is very, very hard on people who hurt kids. If you get the opportunity, you should kill yourself."

"For critics of the criminal justice system, the arrest and imprisonment rates for blacks and other minorities suggest that the system discriminates against those groups. They argue, for example, that blacks, who make up 12 percent of the national population, could not possibly commit 48 percent of the crime: Yet that is exactly what arrest and imprisonment rates imply about black criminality. Defenders of the system argue that the arrest and imprisonment rates do not lie; the system simply reacts to the prevalence of crime in the black community. As we have noted repeatedly, prior research has not settled this controversy. For every study that finds discrimination in arrests, convictions, sentencing, prison treatment, or parole, another denies it."

"Research on sentence patterns lends support to the contention that the system "values" whites more than it does minorities. For example, Zimring, Eigen, and O'Malley (1976) found that black defendants who killed whites received life imprisonment or the death sentence more than twice as often as blacks who killed blacks. Other research has found this relationship for other crimes as well: Defendants receive harsher sentences if the victim is white and lesser sentences if he or she is black. If harsher sentences do indicate that minority status equals lower status in the criminal justice system, that equation may also help explain why minorities serve longer terms, all other things held equal, than white prisoners."

"Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself."

"I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world: And for because the world is populous And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out."

"Might I but through my prison once a day Behold this maid: all corners else o' the earth Let liberty make use of; space enough Have I in such a prison."

"And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands, Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee, By help of her more potent ministers And in her most unmitigable rage, Into a cloven pine; within which rift Imprison'd thou didst painfully remain A dozen years; within which space she died And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy groans As fast as mill-wheels strike."

"Once you're in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don't want to work, they beat you up and throw you in the hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do , the salaries would amount to billions. License plates alone would amount to millions. When Jimmy Carter was governor of Georgia, he brought a Black woman from prison to clean the state house and babysit Amy. Prisons are a profitable business. The are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? they certainly aren't planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government's genocidal war against Black and Third World people."

"It took a sleepless week of data crunching, but I eventually tracked down the location of my friends - locked away in the mysterious towers of Prague. At the moment, they're the unwilling guests of Interpol's most renowned prison warden - the Contessa. While still a criminal psychology student, she entered into a whirlwind romance and married a wealthy aristocrat. Sadly, the union was short-lived, as the general "suspiciously" died a few weeks after the ceremony. The widowed Contessa put her education and newly acquired estate to work by opening a criminal rehabilitation center. Her pioneering use of hypnotherapy has produced some good results and subsequently earned her a prominent position within Interpol. My friends are locked up somewhere in the clinic and are slated for the Contessa's "good samaritan" brainwashing. If I don't bust them out soon, they'll be working a 9-to-5 job selling shoes and I'll be out 2 best friends!"

"Life in Prison was pretty boring for Hamas guys. We were not allowed to play cards. We were supposed to limit our reading to the Qu'r'an or Islamic books. The other factions were allowed a lot more freedom than we were."

"If they lock me up, at least I'll have a place to stay."

"If a captive mind is unaware of being in prison, it is living in error. If it has recognized the fact, even for the tenth of a second, and then quickly forgotten it in order to avoid suffering, it is living in falsehood. Men of the most brilliant intelligence can be born, live and die in error and falsehood. In them, intelligence is neither a good, nor even an asset. The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell."

"I never saw sad men who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue We prisoners called the sky, And at every careless cloud that passed In happy freedom by."

"The Americans have always been more open to my ideas. In fact, I could earn a living in America just by lecturing. One of my brightest audiences, incidentally, were the prisoners in a Philadelphia gaol — brighter than my students at university."

"In durance vile here must I wake and weep, And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep."

"Whene'er with haggard eyes I view This dungeon that I'm rotting in, I think of those companions true Who studied with me at the U- Niversity of Göttingen."

"Prison'd in a parlour snug and small, Like bottled wasps upon a southern wall."

"As if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel."

"In durance vile."

"That which the world miscalls a jail, A private closet is to me. * * * * * Locks, bars, and solitude together met, Make me no prisoner, but an anchoret."

"Olen pääni vanki. (Jarno Pennanen) (SSSK)"