"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurence of crime." --Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."--Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then, they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew...Then they came for the Catholics. I didn't speak up then because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up."-- Reverend Martin Niemoller, German Lutheran pastor arrested by the Gestapo in 1937.
"Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage. Minds innocent and quiet take that for an hermitage."--Richard Lovelace (1618-1658)
"Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them."--Hebrews 13:3
"Dangerous criminals need to be locked up as long as possible. But among 46,000 men and women behind bars, there are good people who made bad mistakes, drew a lousy lawyer or got jacked by a flawed system. They can be illiterate "burgurs" or former teachers, but low-risk, well-behaved prisoners deserve a chance to test drive freedom. The sign says "Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections." A parole board that can't handle that can't be replaced fast enough."--Peter Bronson, Editorial Page Editor, Cincinnati Enquirer.
"If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and wast administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in."--Frank Wood, Commissioner of Corrections, Minnesota.
"I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations which followed them out again without let or hinderance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it."--Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.
"Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them."--Hebrews 13:3
"Dangerous criminals need to be locked up as long as possible. But among 46,000 men and women behind bars, there are good people who made bad mistakes, drew a lousy lawyer or got jacked by a flawed system. They can be illiterate "burgurs" or former teachers, but low-risk, well-behaved prisoners deserve a chance to test drive freedom. The sign says "Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections." A parole board that can't handle that can't be replaced fast enough."--Peter Bronson, Editorial Page Editor, Cincinnati Enquirer.
"If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and wast administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in."--Frank Wood, Commissioner of Corrections, Minnesota.
"I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations which followed them out again without let or hinderance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it."--Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.
"What you do to these men, you do to God."--Mother Teresa during her visit to San Quentin Prison.
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