Incarceration Quotes

“The Fulcrum is not the first institution to have learned an eternal truth of humankind: No need for guards when you can convince people to collaborate in their own internment.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“I cover my eyes with both hands. I think I'm either going to vomit or cry. At the moment, I can't decide which would make me feel better. I part my fingers to look at Matty. "It was only a few emails and texts."
"A few?"
"And maybe I showed up at ShopRite once or twice when he was getting off work.
"Good way to keep busy after a breakup. Hoping incarceration would fill those empty hours?" Matty says.”
― Jennifer Salvato Doktorski, How My Summer Went Up in Flames

“Prison is designed to break one's spirit and destroy one's resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality--all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.”
― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

“Joe closed his hand over the watch and it was still warm from his father's pocket, ticking against his palm like a heart.”
― Dennis Lehane, Live by Night

“Crime and punishment can be summed up in two classifications: there are bad people and there are people who get into bad situations. The lines for liberation and rehabilitation should first begin with the people who get into bad situations.”
― Johnnie Dent Jr.

“Whiteness mitigates crime, whereas blackness defines the criminal.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Is it possible that my walls are specifically erected and intentionally reinforced out of the fear that God calls me to an existence without walls? And if this is so, do I realize that I am the warden of prison that I created in which I myself am the prisoner?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough, An Intimate Collision: Encounters with Life and Jesus

“Looks sure can be deceiving: not every ‘ugly’ person is a ‘bad’ person (or is guilty of whatever it is that they are accused of).”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“I would suggest that the prisons I incessantly create are not designed to lock me in, rather they are designed to lock the world out. And the oddity is that either way, I am a prisoner who has sentenced himself to a prison within which I do not belong.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“It's a fucking jail! A jail for people who've done nothing wrong except come here by boat. It's not even fucking illegal - did you know that?”
― Clare Atkins, Between Us

“Deputy sheriffs had always held the power in the jails. They controlled the culture of the place. if they didn't like you or what you were doing in the programs, then you weren't going to succeed. It didn't matter if you had developed a pill that would solve all the prisoners' problems in one swallow. If they thought prisoners were animals who deserved to be treated like garbage, then that's how they were treated.”
― Sunny Schwartz, Dreams from the Monster Factory: A Tale of Prison, Redemption, and One Woman's Fight to Restore Justice to All

“Proshka was a man of self-esteem. He considered himself a cut above the rest, and had a degree of personal pride. His spell in prison was a humiliating experience for him. No longer could he strut with pride before his fellows, and his spirits sank at once.
Proshka went home from prison embittered not so much against Pyotr Nikolayevich as against the whole world.
Everyone said the same thing: after he came out of prison, Proshka went to pieces. He grew too lazy to work, took to drink, and was soon caught stealing clothes from the trademan's wife. Once again he ended up in prison.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Forged Coupon

“Don’t serve time. Make time serve you.”
― Timothy G Cameron

“Ojiugo often asked, 'But are they treating you well? Are they treating you well?' as though the treatment was what mattered, rather than the blighted reality of it all, that he was in a holding center, about to be deported. Nobody behaved normally. They were all under the spell of his misfortune.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“It was just the wrong race at the wrong time.”
― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage