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

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one's person.

Without turning prison life into something more meaningful, prisoners are more likely to reoffend.

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

People always think about what prison is. What prison really is - it's not a physical challenge, it's mental.

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.

I know what it's like to be ignored, and I think that is the big problem about the prison system: These people are being thrown away. There is no sense of rehabilitation. In some places, they are trying to do things. But, in most cases, it's a holding cell.

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

Prison is a recruitment center for the army of crime. That is what it achieves.

The fact is that, in all prisons everywhere, cruelties on the one hand and injudicious laxity of discipline on the other have at times appeared and will, at intervals, be renewed except the most vigilant oversight is maintained.