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Prison Quotes

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Prison Quotes

“After six long hours of driving and three rest stops, Tiger pulls up to a snow-topped, metal speaker box just outside the State Penitentiary's first gate in Walla Walla. As he rolls down his window and snow flies in his face, Joshua starts begging for a Happy Meal. I turn around, snapping at him. "This ISN'T MCDONALDS and YOU AREN'T HUNGRY. NOW SHUT UP BRAT." A loud scratchy masculine voice blasts out of the speaker. "CAN I HELP YOU?" Tiger leans out the window, as he answers- We're here to visit Raven Chandler. "HAVE YOU BEEN HERE BEFORE?" "Yes sir. I've been here A LOT." "WHERE'S HIS MOTHER?" "I don't know.. I haven't seen her in months." "NOT THE PRISONER'S MOTHER. THE BRAT IN THE BACK SEAT OF YOUR JEEP." "Oh- HIM-" As he turns, smiling and sticking his tongue out at Joshua, I lean towards his window to answer the guard's question. "SHE'S IN VEGAS, SIR. I'M BABYSITTING. HE'S MY GODSON." When the speaker remains disturbingly silent for far too long, I continue. "HE'S A GOOD BOY SIR. HE WON'T BE ANY TROUBLE- I SWEAR." "THAT'S RIGHT," Tiger said. "HE SWEARS ON THE LITTLE BRAT'S MOTHER'S GRAVE.”

MotherTroubleGayPrisonHappyDrivingHungrySnowPrisonerSwearDisturbingVegasMcdonaldsGay RomanceGraveBratMealRavenVisitBabysittingGay Romance EroticaJeepGod SonChandlerWalla
Book:Uninhibited From Lust To Love
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“The term 'deinstitutionalization' conceals some simple truths, namely, that old, unwanted persons, formerly housed in state hospitals, are now housed in nursing homes; that young, unwanted persons, formerly also housed in state hospitals, are now housed in prisons or parapsychiatric facilities; and that both groups of inmates are systematically drugged with psychiatric medications.”

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Book:Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted
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“Living according to God's truth means that my ego must die, and I must live entirely for God and for my neighbors. Living according to God's truth means not following the crowd and not being dismayed when even your friends misunderstand you. For the God whom you serve will have the final word. On the day of judgement he will speak the final word over the whole of your life.”

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Book:Letters from a Soviet Prison Camp
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“To promise to abide by this legislation, so inimical to God, would mean forsaking the gospel and turning away from God's law. This is why Christians have a choice to make, either to trade in their loyalty to God for freedom from persecution, or to remain true to Christ and consequently run the risk of persecution.”

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Book:Letters from a Soviet Prison Camp
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“I became a Christian at the age of seventeen. I made a very conscious act of commitment and my only desire was to be kept in purity and holiness throughout the whole time of my earthly pilgrimage. I didn't choose Christ's narrow path for the riches, fame, or comfortable life it would bring, for I had experienced several times in my family before I became a Christian that true discipleship would mean a life of persecution.”

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Author:Mikhail Khorev
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“Guards punished anyone caught taking bones from the garbage by fastening the bone between his teeth, across his mouth, and then tying like a gag. "And then the poor fellow was made to fall down and crawl around on his hands and knees like a dog, a laughing stock for Federal soldiers, spies, and camp followers," Bean recalled bitterly.”

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Book:To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65
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“ما أثار استغرابنا ليس توهمنا سماع صوت سحب أقسام البنادق فحسب، بل اكتشافنا اننا طوال سيرنا التي تجاوزت بضع ساعات كنا نتوهم صوت رئيس العرفاء يحثنا على السير و يحذرنا من الوقوف، حيث اننا اكتشفنا ان لاوجود لرئيس العرفاء أصلاً. - ألم نسمع صوت رئيس العرفاء طوال الطريق و هو يردد يمين يسار؟ سأل رجل فلم يجبه أحد و لكنني رددت مع نفسي بيقين : - إنه صوت نفسك الأمارة بالعبودية!”

PrisonSlavery Quotesعبودية
Book:الفئران
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“The liberal international human rights community often defines political internees as those incarcerated for their beliefs, not necessarily their actions. While such instances abound, they are not the only or even the best examples of politically motivated incarceration. Whether someone “did it” ought not to determine fully who receives our support. Instead, political prisoners are best conceived as active participants in resistance movements. Thus the central issue for thinking about political prisoners is not whether they “did it” but what movements did they come from and what are the broader circumstances surrounding their arrest. Most of those incarcerated participated in radical movements seeking fundamental overhauls of structures of power. (...) Political prisoners emerged from movements seeking to stop, to overturn, to develop alternatives to state and extralegal violence of the system. All of America’s political internees did something; some resisted with force, some put their bodies on the line, and others used words and propagated ideas the state deemed too powerful to let slide as just so much free speech. The issue of political prisoners is less one of “innocence” than of defending people’s ability and capacity to resist.”

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Book:The Struggle Within: Prisons, Political Prisoners, and Mass Movements in the United States
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“Yet our ability to exercise free will and transcend the most extraordinary obstacles does not make the conditions of our life irrelevant. Most of us struggle and often fail to meet the biggest challenges of our lives. Even the smaller challenges—breaking a bad habit or sticking to a diet—often prove too difficult, even for those of us who are relatively privileged and comfortable in our daily lives. In fact, what is most remarkable about the hundreds of thousands of people who return from prison to their communities each year is not how many fail, but how many somehow manage to survive and stay out of prison against all odds.”

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Author:Michelle Alexander
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“We care (about prison education), very simply, because (prisoners) get out. Almost everyone who is locked up now is going to be set free one day. If we treat prisoners like animals the whole time they are locked up, that's what we'll get when they're back on the streets: wild, dangerous animals.”

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Book:College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons
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“If he's a poet, why's he in jail?" demanded a suspicious voice. Madam Chairwoman shrugged velvet shoulders. "Perhaps he writes free verse," she suggested cunningly. A stir of approval answered her. Mice are all for people being free, so that they too can be freed form their eternal task of cheering prisoners--so that they can stay snug at home, nibbling the family cheese, instead of sleeping out in damp straw on a diet of stale bread.”

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Book:The Rescuers
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“A major challenge of this movement is to do the work that will create more humane, habitable environments for people in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison system. How, then, do we accomplish this balancing act of passionately attending to the needs of prisoners- calling for less violent conditions, an end to state sexual assault, improved physical and mental health care, greater access to drug programs, better educational work opportunities, unionization of prison labor, more connections with families and communities, shorter or alternative sentencing- and at the same time call for alternatives to sentencing altogether, no more prison construction, and abolitionist strategies that question the place of prison in our future?”

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Author:Angela Y. Davis
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“Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. Those who're touched, put 'em in asylums. Pack off old ones to 'senior communities,' nursing homes. Our children? Keep'em prisoner, baby-sitter as warden. School? Good for fifteen to twenty years. Army afterward. Liberated, we live in prison. No this, no that. Kill us before we die!”

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Book:M: Writings '67–'72
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“Sometimes a revolution turns into an actual government, or at the very least an actual way of life that contrasts with days past like blood on snow. Such was the case in France, where even as the guillotine released a steady river of gore, Royalist insurrections were suppressed by what had become a sophisticated military. In Toulon, the Royalist insurrection in 1793 led to an actual siege by republicans, spearheaded by none other than Napoleon Bonaparte. The Royalists in Toulon, supported by the British and Spanish, were feared by the republicans as an existential threat to every hope and promise of the revolution. For months there were bombardments, cannon fire that made the windows in the prison tremble.”

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Book:Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert
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“As if they are a mountaineer climbing across the great slopes of Mount Everest, meth monkeys take quite the health risk. Their minds become mush due to sleep deprivation. Like pillows with way too many hours of sleep invested into them, these minds exhaust themselves and become overworked. Like that of old television shows, their minds become reruns on repeat.”

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Author:James Allen Firth
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“Slacker had come into the language as a term of frequent use. Bundles of Hearst newspapers had been burned in Times Square because Hearst was slow in swinging to the Allied cause but in a few weeks he had swung, and American flags were printed all over his daily sheets. So-called pro-Germans were being tarred and feathered by mobs in the West. Frank Little of the I.W.W. executive board had been lynched by business men in Butte, Montana. And new and appalling tales of cruelty to conscientious objectors were coming out of the prisons where they were confined.”

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Author:Art Young
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“In 1934, at the January Plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission of the Soviet Communist Party, the Great Leader (having already in mind, no doubt, how many he would soon have to do away with) declared that the withering away of the state (which had been awaited virtually from 1920 on) would arrive via, believe it or not, the maximum intensification of state power. This was so unexpectedly brilliant that it was not given to every little mind to grasp it, but Vyshinsky, ever the loyal apprentice, immediately picked it up: "And this means the maximum strengthening of corrective-labor institutions." Entry into socialism via the maximum strengthening of prisons! And this was not some satirical magazine cracking a joke, either, but was said by the Prosecutor General of the Soviet Union!”

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Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
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“Why had they arrested me? 'Because of a word, perhaps, or a silent grimace,' Razziel Paritus suggested, stroking his beard. 'Or for something your parents were supposed to have done or said. In this country denouncing people is a social duty, a moral imperative, a kind of state religion. It's also possible they arrested you for no reason at all. That your only crime is your innocence.”

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Book:The Judges
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