Rethinking Incarceration Quotes

We commonly speak as though a single 'thing' could 'have' some characteristic. A stone, we say, is 'hard,' 'small,' 'heavy,' 'yellow,' 'dense,' etc.

That is how our language is made: 'The stone is hard.' And so on. And that way of talking is good enough for the marketplace: 'That is a new brand.' 'The potatoes are rotten.' 'The container is damaged.' ... And so on.

But this way of talking is not good enough in science or epistemology. To think straight, it is advisable to expect all qualities and attributes, adjectives, and so on to refer to at least -two- sets of interactions in time. ...

Language continually asserts by the syntax of subject and predicate that 'things' somehow 'have' qualities and attributes. A more precise way of talking would insist that the 'things' are produced, are seen as separate from other 'things,' and are made 'real' by their internal relations and by their behaviour in relationship with other things and with the speaker.

It is necessary to be quite clear about the universal truth that whatever 'things' may be in their pleromatic and thingish world, they can only enter the world of communication and meaning by their names, their qualities and their attributes (i.e., by reports of their internal and external relations and interactions). ~ Gregory Bateson

Expensive illogicalities and inefficiencies do not worry the monsters of American bureaucracy, and the taxpayers are enthusiastic and eager to spend fortunes in the name of fighting crime. Prison places cost the US taxpayer more than university places. The American belief that prisons are the best way to combat crime has led to an incarceration rate that is at least five times that of almost any industrialised nation. Overcrowding is endemic. Conditions are appalling, varying from windowless, sensory-deprived isolation to barren futile brutality. ~ Howard Marks

epistemological appreciation of the profundity of what the Internet offers humanity as a model of a learning institution.
To initiate and exemplify this rethinking of virtually enabled and enhanced learning institutions, we used this project to examine potential new models of digital learning. This project, in short, is an experiment. We engaged multiple forms of participatory learning to test the power of "virtual institutions" and to model other ways that virtual, digital institutions can be used for learning. The process itself informed every step of our thinking about new forms of alliances, intellectual networks, ~ Cathy N. Davidson

In other words, in the same way that mass incarceration surged because of a real thing, it's finally starting to ebb because of a real thing: the actual, concrete decline in violent crime that started in the early 90s and which appears to be permanent. America is simply a safer place than it used to be, and looks set to stay that way. ~ Kevin Drum

Once one crosses a conceptual threshold of rethinking what nature might or might not be, it can multiply outward radically. The world becomes a more interesting place to be, and one is perhaps somewhat less judgmental. ~ Michael Light

American prisons have become warehouses for the mentally ill. Mass incarceration has been largely ruled by misguided drug policy and excessive sentencing, but the internment of hundreds of thousands of poor and mentally ill people has been a driving force in achieving our record levels of imprisonment. ~ Bryan Stevenson

Of course, we often think we have to get sick literally in order to get the rest or pleasure we need in our lives. Bobbie and I therefore taught our children when they were younger that if they needed a day off from school, they should just say that and take a health day, not a sick day. That made them look at life differently. I think all of us need to rethink our attitudes toward health and sickness. ~ Bernie S. Siegel

Think about rethinking what you're thinking, before speaking the thought you were thinking, and cause unintended consequences for speaking what you probably shouldn't have been thinking. ~ T.F. Hodge

The sunlight ranges over the universe, and at incarnation we step out of it into the twilight of the body, and see but dimly during the period of our incarceration; at death we step out of the prison again into the sunlight, and are nearer to the reality. ~ Annie Besant

There is a direct correlation between physical exertion and mental relief. ~ Sakyong Mipham

We retell our favorite stories. That's what we've done since we were sitting around campfires. It's a part of the human spirit. It doesn't have to be negative to creativity. It can be completely opposite. That's how you can break new ground: by rethinking something that's already been done. ~ Joel Kinnaman

We cannot incarcerate ourselves out of addiction. Addiction is a medical crisis that - when it comes to nonviolent offenders - warrants medical interventions, not incarceration. Decades later, data unequivocally illustrates that this war has been a massive failure. It has not only failed to reduce violent crime, but arrest rates - throughout its tenure - have continuously ascended even when crime rates have descended. ~ Dominique DuBois Gilliard

I live in New Orleans, because it's the strangest city in the United States. It has the highest murder rate in the country, the highest incarceration rate, and often we have to boil our drinking water, but there's nowhere else remotely like it. ~ Nathaniel Rich

I think my whole life has been shaped by my childhood incarceration in America's concentration camps. ~ George Takei

Economists have calculated that every dollar invested in high-quality home visitation, day care, and preschool programs results in seven dollars of savings on welfare payments, health-care costs, substance-abuse treatment, and incarceration, plus higher tax revenues due to better-paying jobs.37 ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

After they see me, when their mothers are feeding them all that cashmere sweater and girdle
[expletive deleted by the New York Times], maybe they'll have a second thought - that they can be themselves and win. ~ Janis Joplin

What I do see, for instance, is that the French are not very happy with the ... I am happy but they are not and I understand why they are not happy. They still believe in some nuclear strategic formulas which they have inherited from General De Gaulle and they have started the process of rethinking, they haven't gone very far. ~ Helmut Schmidt

So, the emerging church is about a re-imagining: re-imagining our preaching, our evangelism, and our worship services. A re-imagining of new types of churches and an opportunity to be rethinking all we do because we recognize that the next generation is at stake if we don't. ~ Dan Kimball

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

Since the end of the 1970s, something has gone profoundly wrong in America. Inequality has soared. Educational progress slowed. Incarceration rates quintupled. Family breakdown accelerated. Median household income stagnated. ~ Nicholas Kristof

If we continue to tell ourselves the popular myths about racial progress or, worse yet, if we say to ourselves that the problem of mass incarceration is just too big, too daunting for us to do anything about and that we should instead direct our energies to battles that might be more easily won, history will judge us harshly. A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch. ~ Michelle Alexander

Abraham Lincoln had a soft spot for deserters, whom he called his "legs cases." Though many of his military commanders grumbled about Lincoln's leniency - traditionally, runaways were shot - the president preferred incarceration to execution, asking, "If Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs how can he help their running away with him? ~ Sarah Vowell

When I'd RSVPed for tonight, I hadn't expected to be the youngest by three-plus decades. To be honest, I hadn't expected anything. I didn't have the mental capacity. The excitement over my first house party overwhelmed me and kept my thoughts abuzz for three
weeks.
Jim and Valerie suggested Harry and Jackie invite me. Understandably, Harry and Jackie were skeptical about bringing a single male into their close-knit group, but Valerie vouched for me, which persuaded Jackie. I leapt at the invitation - any single male would have - but now, learning about the most recent medications to assist smooth menopausal transition, I was seriously rethinking my decision. ~ Daniel Stern

Whiteness mitigates crime, whereas blackness defines the criminal. ~ Michelle Alexander

Two boys who looked to be seven years old had been picked up while sweeping floors in a cheap hotel. They reminded Abdul of his little brothers, and he felt emotional being around them. He couldn't see why the state had taken them from their parents. Being so poor that you had to work so young seemed like punishment enough.

Abdul had kept to himself in his first days at Dongri, aware of his inadequacy in the conversational arts, but the incarceration of the seven-year-olds inflamed him. "What's the use, keeping them here?" he blurted out one day. "You see their faces? So much enthusiasm for life, they are going to break the walls of this jail. The government people should let them work, let them be free. ~ Katherine Boo

In a way the better the master;the worse the condition of slave,because it makes him forget what he is. ~ Amitav Ghosh

Moreover, in the system of criminal punishment in the libertarian world, the emphasis would never be, as it is now, on "society's" jailing the criminal; the emphasis would necessarily be on compelling the criminal to make restitution to the victim of his crime. The present system, in which the victim is not recompensed but instead has to pay taxes to support the incarceration of his own attacker - would be evident nonsense in a world that focuses on the defense of property rights and therefore on the victim of crime. ~ Murray N. Rothbard

The formula for a public assassination is: the character assassination before the physical assassination; so one has to be made killable before the eyes of the public in order for their eventual murder to then be deemed justifiable. And when the time arrives for these hits to be carried out, you're not going to see a C.I.A. agent with a suit & tie, and a badge that says "C.I.A." walk up to someone, and pull the trigger. What they will do is out-source to local police departments in the region of their target, and to employ those that look like the target of interest to infiltrate the workings in order to set up the environment for the eventual assassination (character, physical/incarceration, exile) to take place. ~ Malcolm Shabazz

In musing on all that occurred in the course of the several years of harassment the error I decided I made, and others frequently make, is to assume that we are all academics trying to sort out intellectual issues. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation is a political organization composed primarily of individuals who have been accused of child sexual abuse and those who support and defend them, sometimes for considerable sums.
Such people are not going to be swayed by the research. They start with a fixed point of view-the need to deflect threat. That threat comes in the form of public exposure, loss of income, monetary penalties, or even in some cases incarceration. I heard a colleague say recently, in referring to the 30 or so studies that document the existence of recovered memory, "You get to the point where you wonder when is it going to be enough." It is never going to be enough if the point is not searching for the truth but protecting a particular point of view.
Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998 ~ Anna C. Salter

At the very least, given this symbolic process and its ideological consequences, mass incarceration's racial disparities will rarely provoke a crisis of conscience for those ensconced in white dominant society. To be sure, there will be some white analysts who insist that knowledge of the disparity and the conditions of mass incarceration should generate society-wide shame and so indict a whole society for the indignity and inhumanity that U.S. prison institutions have institutionalized. ~ Mark Lewis Taylor

The agile value "Delivering Value over Meeting Constraints" provides a focus for rethinking how we measure performance on projects. ~ Jim Highsmith

My work on Orange has taught me this: Human beings are not categorically bad because of their mistakes. They can learn from their errors and get back on track. No one should be forever written off because of one part of his or her history. ~ Diane Guerrero

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

If the incarceration experience doesn't break your spirit, it changes you in a way that you lose many fears. You begin to realize that your life is not ruled by your ego and ambition and that it can end any day at any time. So why worry? You learn that just like on the street, there is life in prison, and random people get there based on the jeopardy of the system. The prisons are filled by people who crossed the law, as well as by those who were incidentally and circumstantially picked and crushed by somebody else's agenda. On the other hand, as a vivid benefit, you become very much independent of material property and learn to appreciate very simple pleasures in life such as the sunlight and morning breeze. ~ Michael Lewis

Upon reflection, it is relatively easy to understand how Americans come to deny the evils of mass incarceration. Denial is facilitated by persistent racial segregation in housing and schools, by political demagoguery, by racialized media imagery, and by the ease of changing one's perception of reality simply by changing television channels. There is little reason to doubt the prevailing "common sense" that black and brown men have been locked up en masse merely in response to crime rates when one's sources of information are mainstream media outlets. ~ Michelle Alexander