One of the major scandals since Reagan is the huge incarceration programme which is a huge weapon against – it’s a race war but it’s based on drugs. Noam Chomsky, interview Chris Hedges June 2014, Youtube 55.08
A source of cheap labour – so prison labour is going way up … In fact the scale of prison construction, which is a kind of Keynsian stimulus to the economy, but its scale has become so enormous that even high-tech industry – you know the guys are usually just ripping off the Pentagon system – they’re beginning to look at it. Noam Chomsky, lecture Harvard University 13th April 1996, ‘Free Market Fantasies: Capitalism in the Real World’
A close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up. David Foster Wallace
Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? Thomas Wolfe, foreword to ‘Look Homeward, Angel’, 1929
Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain. But you feel it. You have felt it your entire life. That there is something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s like there’s a splinter in your mind driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everything. All around us ... It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. That you are a slave, Neil. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison you cannot smell or touch. A prison for your mind. The Matrix 1999 starring Keanu Reeves & Laurence Fishburne & Carrie-Anne Moss & Hugo Weaving & Joe Pantoliano & Gloria Foster & Marcus Chong & Julian Arahanga & Matt Doran & Belinda McClory et al, directors Andy & Lana Wachowski, Morpheus
I’m going to be honest with you. I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, or whatever you want to call it. I can’t stand it any longer. It’s the smell. ibid. man in black to Morpheus
The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness. Andre Malraux, La Condition Humaine
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind. Albert Einstein, letter 12 February 1950, version cited Alice Calaprice, ‘The New Quotable Einstein’, variations
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792
Was not the world a vast prison, and women born slaves? Mary Wollstonecraft, ‘The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria’, 1798
What a misfortune it is to be born a woman! … Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show us the new limits, the Gothic structure, the impenetrable barriers of our prison. Maria Edgeworth, Leonora, 1806
Annie Kenney went to Manchester’s Strangeways Prison for three days. Christabel Pankhurst for six. And their short imprisonment was an inspiration to women all over Britain. Andrew Marr’s Making of Modern Britain, BBC 2009
Denmark: Attempting to escape from prison is not actually illegal, although if recaptured, one is required to serve out the remainder of one’s term. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! 2006
[Jose] Padilla alleged that he was subjected to prolonged isolation; deprivation of light; exposure to prolonged periods of light and darkness, including being ‘periodically subjected to absolute light or darkness for periods in excess of twenty-four hours’; extreme variations in temperature; sleep adjustment; threats of severe physical abuse; death threats; administration of psychotropic drugs; shackling and manacling for hours at a time; use of ‘stress’ positions; noxious fumes that caused pain to eyes and nose; loud noises; withholding of any mattress, pillow, sheet, or blanket; forced grooming; suspensions of showers; removal of religious items; constant surveillance; incommunicado detention, including denial of all contact with family and legal counsel for a 21-month period; interference with religious observance; and denial of medical care for ‘serious and potentially life-threatening ailments, including chest pain and difficulty breathing, as well as for treatment of the chronic, extreme pain caused by being forced to endure stress positions’. United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, May 2012
The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist. Winston Churchill, telegram to Home Secretary
The fact is that the modern implementation of the prison planet has far surpassed even Orwell’s 1984 and the only difference between our society and those fictionalized by Huxley, Orwell and others, is that the advertising techniques used to package the propaganda are a little more sophisticated on the surface.
Yet just a quick glance behind the curtain reveals that the age old tactics of manipulation of fear and manufactured consensus are still being used to force humanity into accepting the terms of its own imprisonment and in turn policing others within the prison without bars. Paul Joseph Watson
Freedom or prison – what’s the difference? A man must develop unwavering willpower subject only to his reason. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle
The thoughts of a prisoner – they’re not free either. They keep returning to the same things. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I have resigned. I will not be pushed. Filed. Stamped. Indexed. Briefed. Debriefed. Or numbered. My life is my own. My life is my own. I am not a number. I am a free man. The Prisoner, TV series 1967-68
Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the Earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. Eugene V Debs
Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life. Bob Marley
He was now a prisoner in a frightening and unfamiliar world. Vincent – The Untold Story of Our Uncle II, caption
Well, we’re our own prisons. We’re each our own wardens and we do our own times. We get stuck in our own little trips and we kind a judge ourselves the way we do. You know, I can’t judge uh, nobody else; best thing I can do is try to judge myself and live with that. See, what other people do is not really my affair, unless they approach me with it, and want me to do something about it. Uh, then I’ll uh take into consideration what has to be done. But other than that I just uh, try to do my number, and do my time. Charles Manson, interview Tom Snyder 1981
Charles Manson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, November 1934 and he took to a life of crime very early ... Seventeen of those thirty-two years were spent in reformatories and prisons. Vincent Bugliosi, prosecutor Tate/Labianca murders
I’m not going to prison on account of you assholes. Thief 1/6 starring Andre Braugher & Mae Whitman & Malik Yoba & Yancey Arias & Clifton Collins junior et al, FX Networks, Nick, FX 2006
Allowing you to simply go to jail is the last gift I’ll ever give you. Boardwalk Empire s3e4: Blue Bell Boy, Nucky to Eli, HBO 2012
I could go to jail. We both could. Boardwalk Empire s4e6: The North Star, bloke in bank
Oakland County Jail: for many life here means making a choice – join a gang or live without protection. Extreme Prison Gangs, National Geographic 2010
Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail near Oakland houses four thousand inmates. ibid.
Oakland has a serious gang problem. ibid.
There are hundreds of cliques and gangs in California. ibid.
The deputies walk through each of the tanks where thirty-six men are double-bunked behind mesh for the night. ibid.
The city of Oakland, California, has one of America’s highest crime rates. ibid.
The Yard is all about territory. ibid.
Their clashes can be deadly. ibid.
The shot-caller is the one in charge; he runs the Dorm. ibid.
By being placed in protective custody the drop-outs are already marked by the red jumpsuits they wear. ibid.
It’s just my kind of luck that I get to wind up in Wandsworth, which is a dirty stinking place. Ronnie Biggs