1
I would suggest that the prisons I incessantly create are not designed to lock me in, rather they are designed to lock the world out. And the oddity is that either way, I am a prisoner who has sentenced himself to a prison within which I do not belong.Craig D. Lounsbrough
2
Is it possible that my walls are specifically erected and intentionally reinforced out of the fear that God calls me to an existence without walls? And if this is so, do I realize that I am the warden of prison that I created in which I myself am the prisoner?Craig D. Lounsbrough
3
The real purpose of the opposition is to minimize the amount of money the ruling party will have stolen from the people at the end of its term.Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Where I grew up, women’s liberation was when you let a chick out of her cage for 15 minutes so she could stretch her legs.John Rachel
5
Looks sure can be deceiving: not every ‘ugly’ person is a ‘bad’ person (or is guilty of whatever it is that they are accused of).Mokokoma Mokhonoana
6
Prison is designed to separate, isolate, and alienate you from everyone and everything. You're not allowed to do so much as touch your spouse, your parents, your children. The system does everything within its power to sever any physical or emotional links you have to anyone in the outside world. They want your children to grow up without ever knowing you. They want your spouse to forget your face and start a new life. They want you to sit alone, grieving, in a concrete box, unable even to say your last farewell at a parent's funeral.Damien Echols
7
Where I grew up, women’s liberation was when you let a chick out of her cage so she could stretch her legs for 15 minutes.John Rachel
8
Proshka was a man of self-esteem. He considered himself a cut above the rest, and had a degree of personal pride. His spell in prison was a humiliating experience for him. No longer could he strut with pride before his fellows, and his spirits sank at once. Proshka went home from prison embittered not so much against Pyotr Nikolayevich as against the whole world. Everyone said the same thing: after he came out of prison, Proshka went to pieces. He grew too lazy to work, took to drink, and was soon caught stealing clothes from the trademan's wife. Once again he ended up in prison.Leo Tolstoy
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Joe closed his hand over the watch and it was still warm from his father's pocket, ticking against his palm like a heart.Dennis Lehane
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We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.Bryan Stevenson
11
I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.Howard Zinn
12
The prison inspector and the warders, though they had never understood or gone into the meaning of these dogmas and of all that went on in church, believed that they must believe, because the higher authorities and the Tsar himself believed in it. Besides, though faintly (and themselves unable to explain why), they felt that this faith defended their cruel occupations. If this faith did not exist it would have been more difficult, perhaps impossible, for them to use all their powers to torment people, as they were now doing, with a quiet conscience. The inspector was such a kind-hearted man that he could not have lived as he was now living unsupported by his faith. .Leo Tolstoy
13
I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief.Paul Beatty
14
Crime and punishment can be summed up in two classifications: there are bad people and there are people who get into bad situations. The lines for liberation and rehabilitation should first begin with the people who get into bad situations.Johnnie Dent Jr.
15
[C]ritics of Canadian securities regulators sometimes point out that a number of high-profile US securities cases have resulted in prison sentences for the offenders, while incarceration for Canadian securities law violators seems very rare..[ A]s has often been noted, incarceration is far more frequent in the United States for crimes of all kinds, yet it is not usually suggested that this is proof that the United States is generally a safer place to live than Canada.Paul Halpern
16
If a deadly snake slithering around in a pre-school bit a child, would you box it up for a month as punishment, and then release it to prey upon the children once again?Edward M. Wolfe
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Don’t serve time. Make time serve you.Timothy G. Cameron
18
The notion that a vast gulf exists between "criminals" and those of us who have never served time in prison is a fiction created by the racial ideology that birthed mass incarceration, namely that there is something fundamentally wrong and morally inferior about "them." The reality, though, is that all of us have done wrong. As noted earlier, studies suggest that most Americans violate drug laws in their lifetime. Indeed, most of us break the law not once but repeatedly throughout our lives. Yet only some of us will be arrested, charged, convicted of a crime, branded a criminal or a felon, and ushered into a permanent undercaste. Who becomes a social pariah and excommunicated from civil society and who trots off to college bears scant relationship to the morality of the crimes committed. Who is more blameworthy: the young black kid who hustles on the street corner, selling weed to help his momma pay rent? Or the college kid who deals drugs out of his dorm room so that he'll have cash to finance his spring break? Who should we fear? The kid in the 'hood who joined a gang and now carries a gun for security, because his neighborhood is frightening and unsafe? Or the suburban high school student who has a drinking problem but keeps getting behind the wheel? Our racially biased system of mass incarceration exploits the fact that all people break the law and make mistakes at various points in their lives with varying degrees of justification. Screwing up-failing to live by one's highest ideals and values-is part of what makes us human. .Michelle Alexander
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As a society, our decision to heap shame and contempt upon those who struggle and fail in a system designed to keep them locked up and locked out says far more about ourselves than it does about them.Michelle Alexander