I’ve never believed in the death sentence myself. Inside Death Row with Trevor McDonald II, McDonald to Fredrick Baer
‘It went from stealing cookies to shooting a cop.’ ibid. prisoner
The twelve men here are locked in their cells for twenty-three hours a day. ibid.
Fredrick Baer: his crime – the murder of a mother and her young daughter. ibid.
‘I ain’t gonna sugar-coat it.’ ibid. Baer
‘I just happened to commit this one murder. That's it.’ ibid. prisoner John
I’m about to be shown a brand-new death chamber in the prison where no-one has been executed for eight years. It’s a clear signal that the state of Indiana fully intends to execute the eleven murderers on Death Row. Death Row 2018 with Trevor McDonald, ITV 2018
They are the people society fears most. And every day thousands of them take this ride heading to another world. A world of violence and coercion, brutality and assault, gang wars and bloody riots. Prison Nation, National Geographic 2007
The United States has more people behind bars than any other country on Earth. ibid.
It’s an entire nation behind bars, a prison nation. ibid.
Do prisons make America safer, or are they breading grounds for trouble? ibid.
After thirty years of mandatory sentencing and the three-strike laws the state prisons are bursting at the seams. ibid.
Invisible boundaries divide one racial group from another. ibid.
Warehousing – stacking men up like boxes. ibid.
The spectre of violence never goes away. ibid.
Prison rape is a fact of life. ibid.
The biggest threat to inmate and officer safety is the gangs. ibid.
Officials count at least 1,600 gangs in prisons across America. ibid.
Drugs sell for up to ten times their street value behind bars. ibid.
35% of prisoners are drug users. ibid.
80,000 inmates are kept in isolation nationwide. ibid.
A rising suicide rate is linked to the increasing use of solitary confinement. ibid.
We don’t usually think of them as mentally ill. ibid.
Prisons have effectively become the new asylums. ibid.
Up to 50% of the mentally ill are in segregation. ibid.
Harming themselves is the one thing they can control. ibid.
Only twelve prisons out of 5,000 nationwide have higher education programmes. ibid.
It may not be making society any safer. ibid.
You will go to prison for five years. Porridge Christmas Special: No Way Out, judge’s voice opening sequence, BBC 1975
Tommy Slocombe’s tunnelling ... That tunnel spells disaster to us all. ibid. Fletch
They’re criminal human beings. ibid. MacKay
They dug another tunnel and put the earth down there. ibid. Fletch to MacKay
So desperate thieves, all hopeless of their lives,
Breathe out invectives ’gainst the officers. William Shakespeare, Richard Duke of York I iv 43-44, Clifford
I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world. William Shakespeare, Richard II V v 1
If we mean to thrive and do good, break open the jails and let out the prisoners. William Shakespeare, The First Part of the Contention II Henry VI IV iii 14-15
I had as life have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment. William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure I ii 125-126, Lucio
Denmark’s a prison. William Shakespeare, Hamlet II ii 242
Come, let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like bird i’ th’ cage. William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear V iii 8-9, Lear
All corners else o’ th’ earth
Let liberty make use of; space enough
Have I in such a prison. William Shakespeare, The Tempest I ii 4994-496, Ferdinand
Send us your prisoners or you’ll hear of it. Henry IV I starring Roger Allam & Oliver Cotton & Jamie Parker & Joseph Timms & Sam Crane & Jason Baughan & Patrick Brennan & William Gaunt & Christopher Godwin & Daon Broni et al, director Dominic Dromgoole, Globe Theatre Sky Arts, King, BBC 2012
Prison life is a waste of time. Reggie Kray, bedside interview
The most effective way to turn a non-violent person into a violent one is to send him to prison. Dr James Gilligan, New York University
Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums, Paul learned, who find prison so soul-destroying. Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall, 1928
Broadmoor – a place with a sinister past that’s synonymous with some of the country’s most notorious offenders. David Wilson, Broadmoor: A History of the Criminally Insane I, CI 2013
The Victorians used to be proud of Broadmoor. ibid.
There are about 260 patients living in Broadmoor. ibid.
The killer Richard Dadd – a prominent nineteenth-century artist. Dadd murdered his own father on 28th August 1843. He was declared insane. ibid.
Children were sent there too. ibid.
The McNaughton Rule was born, and for forty years defendants suffering from mental illness were deemed not guilty by reason of insanity. ibid.
Insanity: an inability to reason because of mental illness. Insanity has a wide reach. ibid.
As Queen Victoria’s reign came to an end the numbers of female patients was close to 200. ibid.
Psychiatric therapies were continuing to be developed. ibid.
Can mental illness and human nature ever really be governed? ibid.
It is said that no-one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones. Nelson Mandela
The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable. Karl Kraus
I was kind of excited to go to jail for the first time and I learnt some great dialogue. Quentin Tarantino
Generally speaking, our prisoners were capable of loving animals, and if they had been allowed they would have delighted to rear large numbers of domestic animals and birds in the prison. And I wonder what other activity could better have softened and refined their harsh and brutal natures than this. But it was not allowed. Neither the regulations nor the nature of the prison made it possible. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead
The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Welcome to hell. A hell erected and maintained by human-governments, and blessed by black robed judges. A hell that allows you to see your loved ones, but not to touch them. A hell situated in America’s boondocks, hundreds of miles away from most families. A white, rural hell, where most of the captives are black and urban. It is an American way of death. Mumia Abu-Jamal, All Things Censored, 2001
Changi became my university instead of my prison ... Among the inmates there were experts in all walks of life – the high and the low roads. I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting, but most of all I learned the art of surviving. James Clavell
Show me a prison, show me a jail
Show me a pris’ner whose face has grown pale
And I’ll show you a young man
With many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or I. Phil Ochs, There But For Fortune, 1963