Quotes About Incarceration

I don't believe that man was built to be put in a 5-by-7 for 30 years and have his sanity when he comes out if he doesn't find something to escape.

I can paint in jail.

Over its 40 years, Muppets on 'Sesame Street' have addressed AIDS, divorce, a parent's deployment overseas, and a death in the family. But the show is addressing incarceration in a way it didn't used to: by bringing the show directly to the kids and families it wants to reach.

I'm proud that, in my first year as Lieutenant Governor, we recommended commutation for 19 people serving life without parole sentences and sent them to the Governor's desk to sign - the most since the early 90s.

During the course of Sean's stay in the jail, Ramirez asked Penn for his autograph. Sean wrote: Dear Richard: It's impossible to be incarcerated and not feel a kinship with your fellow inmates. Well, Richard, I've done the impossible. I feel absolutely no kinship with you. Sean Penn

While the entire US population has increased by about a third since 1980, the federal prison population has grown at an astonishing rate – by almost 800 per cent. It's still growing – despite the fact that federal prisons are operating at nearly 40 per cent above capacity. Even though this country comprises just 5 per cent of the world's population, we incarcerate almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.

Perhaps most important, we need to support women who have fought back against their batterers and rapists and are wasting away in jail for daring to save their own lives. They are political prisoners and should be honored as such—not seen as pathological masochists who "chose" to stay until they "chose" to kill.

I've had four presidential candidates visit me in the tents, and they all lost. I tried to get Hillary down here, but she's too smart. She won't come to the tents.

I love the story of 'Lamborghini Doors,' a record with Meek Mill and myself - it came together when I went to visit him during his incarceration.

Every politician should go and spend time and visit prisons and jails. Because if you are choosing to exercise this kind of power over another person's life, there's a role for that, but you have to know the kind of power you are exercising.

I've been going to visit people in prison since I was a kid.

I was a lawyer for 10 years, and several of my clients had the misfortune, through no fault of my own, of going to prison. I visited them occasionally.

Years now, decades, of visiting my parents behind bars taught me hard lessons about how broken the criminal justice system is - about how devoid of compassion it is. It's not healing the harm that victims experience. It's not rehabilitating people. And in many ways, it's making us less safe.

In court, judges tell people that their conviction carries a sentence of years, or probation. The truth is far more terrible. People convicted of crimes often become social outcasts for life, finding it difficult or impossible to rent an apartment, get a job, adopt children, access public benefits, serve on juries, or vote.

It is tragic that people who are incarcerated are unable to vote. They are probably the most important voices to listen to because they can tell us what we need to change.

I've always been opposed myself to prisoners having the vote.

If I was a bad guy, I probably would be incarcerated.

Clive's point was that the criminal justice system is supposed to repair harm, but most prisoners—young, black—have been incarcerated for acts far less emotionally damaging than the injuries we noncriminals perpetrate upon one another all the time—bad husbands, bad wives, ruthless bosses, bullies, bankers.

There is much that makes one pause in 'If This is a Man', the record of Levi's 11-month incarceration in Auschwitz, much one cannot read without needing to lay aside the book and inhale the breath of common air.

It costs $30,000 to $50,000 per year to send someone to jail. You don't have to pay so much to send someone to school at Johns Hopkins.

My perception has changed from thinking if someone's in jail they're supposed to be, to there's a lot of factors that's not that simple.

A black man of my generation born in the late 1960s is more than twice as likely to go to prison in his lifetime then a black man of my father's generation. I was born after the Voting Rights Act, after the Civil Rights Act, after the Fair Housing Act.

A cage that allows someone to walk around inside of it is still a cage.

You have people there from all walks of life: people who made mistakes and have to deal with the consequences, mothers and fathers. You wouldn't expect them to be behind bars.