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The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Scarlet Letter
How come life in prison doesn't mean life? Until it does, we're not ready to do away with the death penalty. Stop thinking in terms of "punishment" for a minute and think in terms of safeguarding innocent people from incorrigible murderers.
JESSE VENTURA, I Ain't Got Time to Bleed
If Americans actually have the conversation about our disastrous prison policies, we'll understand the trends all move in very dangerous directions: we lock up more people, for less violent crime, at ever greater expense, breeding more dangerous criminals who often come out unemployable, violent and isiolated.
DAHLIA LITHWICK, Newsweek, Jun. 15, 2009
Jails and state prisons are the complement of schools: so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.
- Oh, the inmates and the prisoners
- I found they were my kind
- And it was there inside the bars
- I found my peace of mind
- But the jails they were too crowded
- Institutions overflowed
- So they turned me loose to walk upon
- Life’s hurried tangled road
BOB DYLAN, "Ballad of Donald White"
It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people.
HOWARD ZINN, A People's History of the United States
Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion.
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