#prison

There is nothing like scrubbing toilets for a living to make you question the choices you have made in life. ↗

— Raegan Butcher

#poetry #prisoners #humor

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do? ↗

— Jerry Brown

#prisons #protect #punish

The tears in my pus-filled eyes became a thousand little crystals of ever color. Like stained-glass windows, I thought. God is with you today, Papi! In the midst of nature's monstrous elements, in the wind, the immenseness of the sea, the depth of the waves, the imposing green roof of the bush, you feel your own infinitesimal smallness, and perhaps it's here, without looking for Him, that you find God, that you touch Him with your finger. I had sensed Him at night during the thousands of hours I had spent buried alive in dank dungeons without a ray of sun; I touched Him today in a sun that would devour everything too weak to resist it. I touched God, I felt Him around me, inside me. He even whispered in my ear: "You will suffer; you will suffer more. But this time I am on your side. You will be free. You will, I promise you. ↗

— Henri Charrière

#god #prison #religion #tears #nature

If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn't done anything? They should use prisoners who have been convicted of murder or rape instead. So, rather than seeing if perfume irritates a bunny rabbit's eyes, they should throw it in Charles Manson's eyes and ask him if it hurts. ↗

— Ellen DeGeneres

#animal-rights #animal-testing #animal-welfare #animals #cosmetics

If the prisoner is beaten, it is an arrogant expression of fear. ↗

— Ghassan Kanafani

#prisoners #resistance #short-story

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

#criminal-justice-system #cycle-of-violence #desperation #greed #homelessness