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After the revolution, let us hope, prisons simply would not exist - if by prisons we mean places that could be experienced by the men and women in them at all as every place that goes by that name now is bound to be experienced.

We need prisons because there are some hardcore criminals, but I never met a guy who has been in jail that came out with a smile on his face thinking, 'Right, that's it - now I am going to be good!'

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

I know prisons from the inside.

Prisons are like the concentration camps of our time. So many go in and never come out, and primarily they're black and Latino.

It's a monstrous idea to put people in prison and keep them there.

Dutch prisons are probably the most civilized you're going to find anywhere in the world.

Prison is, indeed, a translation of your metaphysics, ethics, sense of history and whatnot into the compact terms of your daily deportment.

Working in a prison, is, to my mind, similar in ways to working in a coal mine. It's going to scare away a lot of people.

Prison is essentially a shortage of space made up for by a surplus of time; to an inmate, both are palpable.