87 Quotes About Jail

I spent much of my prison time reading. I must have read over 200 large books, mostly fictional stories about the American pioneers, the Vikings, Mafia, etc. As long as I was engrossed in a book, I was not in prison. Reading was my escape. Frazier Glenn Miller

Terrell is weeping soundlessly, and despite the guard’s objection, he raises his hand up to the glass. Geraldine mimics him, lining her fingers up with his. It’s lonely to think that one little sheet of glass could create such a thick distance between them, but all the same, regardless of what he’s done, he’s still one of the closest friends she has. Rebecca McNutt

With his release imminent, Knight seems more unsettled than ever. He scratches furiously at his knees. Jail, he's realized, might not be all bad. There's routine and order in jail, and he's able to click into a survival mode that is not too dissimilar, in terms of steeliness of mental state, to the one he'd perfected during winters in the woods. "I'm surrounded in here by less than desirable people, " he says, "but at least I wasn't thrown into the waters of society and expected to swim. Michael Finkel

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10, 000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10, 000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years. Muhammad Ali

Like most arts, the link between the mind and the pen can chain you like an enslaved workaholic. Even on an intended vacation you suddenly have this killer urge to record whatever the vacation may teach. Criss Jami

Yet torture is above all an art, an artistic discipline just like literature , cinema, or contemporary dance. All detained in the City-State ghettos bitterly missed the torturers of yesteryears, those monsters who worked with the precision of a Swiss watch-maker. Fiston Mwanza Mujila

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

Mom hadn't met Ramon; her advocacy was more arm's length - petitions, the website, letter writing, meetings with politicians. Her friend Hanna had formed a close friendship with Ramon though, visiting him as often as she could. Hanna told me that Ramon's greatest regret was that he wouldn't get to see his daughter grow up. And Jeremy's dad, who had that opportunity, was just throwing it away. It made me furious, and I couldn't let it go. Robin Stevenson

A prisoner should know that there are thousands of imprisoned freemen living in this world…jailed in their own society, handcuffed by duties.. Munia Khan

Sitting in a corner, I live like a toad Oh! How I love my room: my tiny abode! Here I wake up; and I sleep in here The world far away; yet virtually near Not that I'm jailed in this place of grace Just don't want to face another face Munia Khan

The greater ignorance towards a country is not ignoring what its politicians have to say, it is ignoring what the inmates in its prisons have to say. Criss Jami

How many of us readers say this quote and mean it. "If I knew what I know now life would be different".... Unknown

Mr Judge, Jury & Executioner of Micah Xavier Johnson‬ needs to go to jail as soon as possible — he is a danger to civilized society. Steven Magee

From warm meals, to daily exercise, to healthcare; one can't help but wonder how our society would be different if tended to the elderly as we do to our imprisoned. Steve Maraboli

Unprovoked hostility is often but displaced self-defense: 'I must stop him before he stops me.' In many of such environments, nobody is really hateful so much as they are just fearful. Criss Jami

Unfortunately, the board of directors that the middle managers report to generally make them aggressive. Imagine being hired into a company and then being told that you have to ignore the emerging health and safety issues (This is illegal! ) and not inform the workers that the system is known to be dangerous (This is illegal! ). You have two options: To go to jail for illegal activities sometime in the future, or to lose your job now and have all your USA workplace rights removed for recognizing the illegal activities that your Directors want you to engage in. Welcome to the corporate America management team!. Steven Magee

I’ve only been to jail a few times, but in several different countries, at that. No, I've only been to jail a few times. But I still claim the ability to write a "serious" novel. Roman Payne

Poor Ramon. Robin Stevenson

If you were me you’d do the right thing, help your friends, because you’re not a coward, ” Mandy sighed sadly. “I covered up a murder because I was scared to go to jail and I did the wrong thing… well, now’s my chance to do the right thing, to save someone’s life, because I don’t want you to die.”“ Save someone’s life? I’m no one, ” Alecto laughed morbidly. “A hundred and twelve years is definitely way too long to have survived. You’d be wasting your time and risking your own life….”“ This is my life, ” Mandy declared, smiling sincerely. Alecto just looked concerned and very doubtful as the rain drizzled down the roads and sidewalks, towards the harbour where it fell into the ocean, indistinguishable from all the other water in the world. Rebecca McNutt

Don’t jail your imagination. You cannot imagine beyond your desires. You can't unleash your imagination without the SEEDs of desire. Assegid Habtewold

See this abdicated beast, once king Of them all, nibble his claws: Not anger enough left–no, nor despair– To break his teeth on the bars. Cecil DayLewis

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

No one wanted to look at the common evils of society. Very few were willing to put aside their own pursuit of happiness long enough to consider the effects of greed and jealousy around them. From what she'd seen, humans were essentially troubled. For every one behind bars, another ten deserved to be behind bars, but that would put one in ten Americans behind bars. Ted Dekker

It is a sad state of affairs in the USA that for the sick and the poor that jail offers better benefits than the freedom of no healthcare, bills that cannot be paid and starvation. Steven Magee

One day you’re going to get arrested, and when you do, don’t call me. I’ll tell the police to lock you up just to teach you a lesson.” Because there were some black parents who’d actually do that, not pay their kid’s bail, not hire their kid a lawyer–the ultimate tough love. But it doesn’t always work, because you’re giving the kid tough love when maybe he just needs love. You’re trying to teach him a lesson, and now that lesson is the rest of his life. . Trevor Noah

Don't be ridiculous. Brussels sprouts are awful. Jail is just jail. Mora Early

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

Every transgression and disobedience receives a just recompense of reward, except with those who truly love themselves. Auliq Ice

Issues are like tissues. You pull one out and another appears! Gary Goldstein

Jail has become the biggest mental health hospital. Steven Magee

The best stories will come from jail, the people which are in the prison, also and from the victims. Deyth Banger

A mosaic of memories takes me back to my own childhood, and then to my children. My earliest memory of St. Augustine was a day trip from Jacksonville; a day with some neighbors who were nice enough to purchase me a plastic toy-tugboat with a blue superstructure and white hull. Other accounts meld into my adult years. With its history and attractions, The Ancient City is pristine and picturesque by most accounts; but from the Newer Jail (not the Old Jail) , the perspective is very different. H. Kirk Rainer

Rip the prisonsopenput theconvictsontelevision Norman Mailer

He who has never tasted jail Lives well within the legal pale, While he who's served a heavy sentence Renews the racket, not repentance. Ogden Nash

She is shocked by the rows of thick Plexiglas windows, each equipped with a telephone, each with a prisoner on one side and an outsider on the other. There is a teenage girl chatting with a prisoner who is presumably her father. There’s a married couple talking to their daughter. There’s a woman with a baby in her arms, sobbing into her phone as she begs her husband not to plead guilty for his crimes. Jail is terrifying to Geraldine, not only because it’s a house of criminals but also because it’s a cold slap in the face, a reminder of where she will eventually end up. “You’ve got to stay with me the whole time, Callo! I’m serious, you CANNOT leave me here.”“ I’ll never, ” Callo vows, but he’s eyeing her strangely. “Just remember which side of the glass you’re on right now, Geraldine. . Rebecca McNutt

Contentment sounds ideal; and ignorance is bliss! But what remains of truth, justice and liberty? Why can millions of parent do what I did, and not give the law a consideration? Why do I have to suffer the losses of divorce–the pain and sorrow so accompanied the plight of once-parent, now non-custodial? So much more could be preceded by “why”–so as to leave nothing more. To speak, or think, of these many questions is to sound like I’m whining. But I am whining, about why…. H. Kirk Rainer

The uncertainty wore on him. The conditions in jail--the handcuffs, the noise, the filth, the crowding--mangled his senses. It's likely that, if one must be incarcerated in the United States, a jail in central Maine would be among the more tolerable spots, but to Knight it was torture. "Bedlam" is how he referred to the place. It never got dark in jail; at eleven p.m., the lights merely became a little duller. "I suspect, " he noted, "more damage has been done to my sanity in jail, in months; than years, decades, in the woods. Michael Finkel

Roughly a month into my stay in jail, I began the first of twelve letters. The choice of titles had much to do with my reason (or circumstances) for being incarcerated: I was a parent of a past-marriage; and though the courts had dissolved the marriage long ago, the matter of parenting was still being debated (by me)–but prohibited by the courts. I had to accept the possibility that my days as a father might be behind me while remaining dutiful to the possibility that, at anytime, circumstances could change. On the one hand, I am a former-father, but on the other hand, I cannot be anything but a father to my children–at any age. . H. Kirk Rainer

A faraway-father is distant from his children; not necessarily in geography, but socially–either by choice or by force. Our country has many fathers who are figuratively-forced far and away from their families. Legal force brings to bear disparate dads through such innovations as no-fault divorce, legal precedence, and post-divorce incrimination. I am one of these parents–portrayed or profiled as 'perpetrator'. . H. Kirk Rainer

The United States is like one big jail for Black people, because we're locked into a mentality and a mindset that limits our potential. It has us against us. Chuck D

She took my papers, the papers that had followed me from the Khobar police station to jail, and pointed at a place where I was supposed to sign. On the paper there was a line for charges. In the blank space, someone had written “driving while female. Manal AlSharif

How beautiful it is to live in a world with no walls. Manal AlSharif

We were like captive animals that had lost the will to fight. We even went so far as to defend the very constraints that they hadimposed upon us. Manal AlSharif

My association of jail to high school is probably on the basic similarity of a communicable social-setting. These few settings represent a frame of reference: a somewhat fraternal order (though I never belonged to an actual fraternity) where people collect–and may be confined–and somewhat coalesce on a common cause. Jail was a remarkable and unique experience of fellows/fathers and a force of several…. H. Kirk Rainer

I whispered across the bars to Jackaby as I rose, "Shall I tell them the truth?"" Have you killed anyone?" he asked, quietly." No, of course not! "" Then I can't imagine why you shouldn't. William Ritter

Maria, it sounds like he was insane. Rational people don't intentionally addict people. I feel sorry for those poor people who were unsuspecting victims. Unknown

Taking a life, is not worth getting life in prison. Anthony Liccione

He'd searched every corner of his mind looking for ways to avoid a rendezvous with Chico. In the last twenty years, Slade had come a long way from the ghetto orphanage where he'd grown up, but the only way he could help Maria was to get in touch with Chico. Slade remembered the last time he'd seen Chico as though it was yesterday. Unknown

I could tell he wanted the best for me. Of course, he assumed that would be getting out. Everyone always thought that, not of what we had to go back to, at home. Maybe our parents had thrown away our mattresses. Maybe they'd told our siblings we'd been run over by trains, to make our absence fonder. Not everyone had a parent. It could be that nothing was waiting for us. Our keys would no longer fit the locks. We'd resort to ringing the bell, saying we've come home, can't we come in? The eye in the peephole would show itself, and that eye could belong to a stranger, as our family had moved halfway across the country and never informed us. Or that eye could belong to the woman who carried us for nine months, who labored for fourteen hours, who was sliced open with a C-section to give us life, and now wished she never did. The juvenile correctional system could let us out into the world, but it could not control who would be out there, willing to claim us. Nova Ren Suma

The Brinktown jail is one of the most ingenious ever propounded by civic authorities. It must be remembered that Brinktown occupies the surface of a volcanic butte, overlooking a trackless jungle of quagmire, thorn, eel-vine skiver tussock. A single road leads from city down to jungle; the prisoner is merely locked out of the city. Escape is at his option; he may flee as far through the jungle as he sees fit: the entire continent is at his disposal. But no prisoner ever ventures far from the gate; and, when his presence is required, it is only necessary to unlock the gate and call his name. Jack Vance

A gut full of heroin and the looming possibility of bunking in an overcrowded cell in Kerobokan to await my death makes you feel a bit sorry for some of the things you've done. S.A. Tawks

If the holy spirit is in you, you are free, even if you are in a physical jail Sunday Adelaja

When I first went to prison, I made the best out of it. From the streets, I was hearing reports of Rebellions going to prison and getting do in [beat up]. Our fellas had no say, couldn’t even open up their mouths. When I went up there for the first time, I turned that prison into a place that everyone could say that the Rebellions were running it after that. I wouldn’t say I did it alone, but I help set the groundwork to give the Rebellions a say in prison. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members . Drexel Deal

It was a survival thing: he didn't answer back, didn't say anything about job security for prison guards, debate the nature of repentance, rehabilitation, or rates of recidivism. He didn't say anything funny or clever, and, to be on the safe side, when he was talking to a prison official, whenever possible, he didn't say anything at all. Speak when you're spoken to. Do your own time. Get out. Go home.. Rebuild a life. . Neil Gaiman

I'd never opened up the gas station if it had been someone else, but I know Tucker's fond of you. It's a shame you don't keep in touch with the old man. Unknown

Mom and dad probably told you I've been arrested. I'm innocent. I want you to know that. Unknown

I love you" he said. I did not say anything. What could I say? If i said i love you too, i had perpetual punishment for being a liar. Arzum Uzun

Before you are much older...you will have policemen here to stay. A magistrate will be next. Then perhaps even a jail. And the counterparts of those things are hunger and want, and misery and idleness. The night is coming. Watch and pray. Richard Llewellyn

So a while back I spent a night in jail. Now, as for exactly what landed me there, I’d be so delighted to never have to go into any of the details regarding that. Besides, other people’s theories are so much more exotic and exciting than the reality. I've heard everything from 'attempted terrorism' to 'indecent public condescension. Unknown

During the days I felt myself slipping into a kind of madness. Solitary confinement has an astonishing effect on the mind. The trip was to stay calm and keep myself occupied. I spent hours working out how to break free. But trying to escape would have been instant suicide. Tahir Shah

...the court, as now constituted, would be meaningless without the jail which gives it its power. But if there is anything I have learned by being in jail, it is that prisons are wrong, simply and unqualifiedly wrong. Barbara Deming

To live with unforgiveness is to become a captive cultured citizen whose taxation is that of demonically ticketed torment. Tracey Bond

Some people hate the smell of hospitals. I hate the smell of jails and prisons, all the same: stale cigarette smoke, Pine-Sol, urine, sweat, and dust. Ann Rule

Don't promote yourself as a country of constitutionality and compassion if you honestly believe that putting people in prison and treating them like animals is justified. Stop all the hype that we live in a free and democratic society. I used to ramble on about the same stuff. But now–are we really a country that believes in fairness and compassion? Are we really a country that treats people fairly? I've met good men–yes, good men–in prison who made mistakes out of stupidity or ignorance, greed, or just bad judgment, but they did not need to be sent to prison to be punished; eighteen months for catching too many fish; two years for inflating income on a mortgage application; three months for selling a whale's tooth on e Bay; fifteen years for a first-time nonviolent drug conspiracy in which no drugs were found or seized. There are thousands of people like these in our prisons today, costing American taxpayers billions of dollars when these individuals could be punished in smarter, alternative ways. Our courts are overpunishing decent people who make mistakes, and our prisons have no rewards or incentives for good behavior. In this alone criminal justice and prison systems contradict their own mission statements (244). . Bernard B. Kerik

Three year in prison and a dick is just another thing to put up your ass. Marlon James

Whattaya mean you ain’t no criminal lawyer? You a lawyer right? And you in here, that means you also a criminal. Kenneth Eade

Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary confinement is a great deal harder to bear than compulsory. Anton Chekhov

If you know the rules, it's not anymore interesting the game, but if you don't know them it's interesting... like what's the feeling to be 24 hours at jail, who can you meet at jail. Do you know somebody from the guards...?! Deyth Banger

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail. Will Rogers

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. Samuel Johnson

As far as Iraq, the important thing is that the Taliban is gone in Afghanistan, three-quarters of the al- Qaida leadership is either dead or in jail, and we now have Saudi Arabia working with us, Pakistan working with us. Peter T. King

We'll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we feel a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail. Dave Barry

My mom used to get arrested for being with my dad. She would get fined. She would spend weekends in jail. Trevor Noah

What can you do if they have slapped you with a legal notice? You have to reply. For all you know, they have taken you to jail or something. Kangana Ranaut