80 Quotes About Prisoners

  • Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn
  • Quote

    To outsmart you they thought up work squads—but not squads like the ones outside the camps, where everyone is paid his separate wage. Everything was so arranged in the camp that the prisoners egged one another on. It was like this: either you all got a bit extra or you all croaked. You're loafing you bastard—do you think I'm willing to go hungry just because of you? Put your guts into it, slob.

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  • Author Lisa R. Cohen
  • Quote

    Murderers — serving life sentences — were caring for their dying fellow inmates. Washing their bed-sore covered bodies, changing their diapers, holding their hands while they took their last breath. It was the other side of death, not the one at the end of a sudden muzzle flash, but the slow and wrenching kind, leaving plenty of time for hard reflection.

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  • Author Shane Bauer
  • Quote

    When I get home, I draw a bath. I pour a glass of wine, then another, and another. I try to empty my mind. Inside me there is a prison guard and a former prisoner and they are fighting with each other, and I want them to stop.

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  • Author Erika Camplin
  • Quote

    We call our system the Department of Corrections, or simply Corrections, but correcting or any notion of rehabilitation has been largely thrown to the wayside in favor of punitive action through the revocation of selfhood.

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  • Author Erika Camplin
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    Much of the way food has been shaped and formed in prisons is due to the cultural thought about prisoners in general, and how they should be treated by society and by the state. Food in prison is a reflection of culture and cultural thinking about criminal justice and reform.

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  • Author Nelson Mandela
  • Quote

    Prison is designed to break one's spirit and destroy one's resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality--all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.

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  • Author Saulius Stoma
  • Quote

    ...visą pataisos įstaigų sistemą reikėtų tiesiai taip ir vadinti - nusikaltėlių ugdymo bazėmis. Pradinis lygis - nepilnamečių kolonijos, kur paauglys arba suluošinamas psichiškai visam gyvenimui, arba užsigrūdina, surambėja ir išeina puikiausią nusikalstamumo mokyklą prieš ateityje laukiančius Lukiškių ir visus kitus universitetus. Kito pasirinkimo čia beveik nėra. Kaip beveik nėra kito pasirinkimo ir nuteistajam, išėjusiam iš kalėjimo.

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