Facets of Information Gathering and Sharing :: F.I.G.S.

I don't believe in prisons.After workingas a volunteer in the state prisons for more than thirty years, I don't believe the American prison system as we know it should exist. The American prison system is not only a corrupt system, but a corrupting one. It corrupts those who are employed by it and those who are incarcerated in it. (p.51)

...the prison system itself is a kind of microcosm of our culture, deny it however much we will. It reflects what we are with amazing accuracy.(p.52)

... I felt strongly that there was a deliberate attempt to focus pressure on a specific unit in such a way as to create a riot, but I think the impetus for that action came from above, from somewhere in the office of the director of the Department of Corrections in an attempt to extort appropriations from the state legislature, a body that always seems to respond best to fear. (p.58)

On the yard and especially in the chow hall the inmates must observe the protocol of strict separation of the races, but in the workshop a man's racial or ethnic background simply helps give him a unique voice and a respected individuality. (p.61)

..as the workshop progresses...people in the workshop come to think of the group as transcending racial an ethnic boundaries.(p.60)

It was painful, it was wild, it made no sense, it was exhausting, it was depressing, it was exciting, it was beautiful, it was horrifying, it was more than I could handle. I stumbled through it as if I knew what I was doing, and I didn't. it changed my view of prison, of people, and of myself. It changed my view of prison, of people, and of myself. It shaped my life and bent it, the way the wind on the coast shapes and bends trees. I just tried to hang on. (p.88)

Members of the workshop knew they were moving very slowly, but for the first time they knew they were moving in the right direction. Up. Up toward the light and the hope of something besides being demoralized, tortured in one way or another, and often butchered.(p.107)

I wonder how many good, mainstreem American families live as this one was forced to--going about their daily routines cheerfully and successfully while their hearts are broken because of a son or a daughter hidden away in a prison or a mental institution, a son or a daughter whom they love and whose disaster they consider their personal failure and blame themselves for. (p.127)

One of the chaplain's main rules, which he uttered as if it were one of the Ten Commandaments, was that no volunteer was ever, under any circumstance, to have any contact with an inmate after that inmate was paroled or relased.What kind of rehabilitation system is this, I wondered...(p.143)

Karen had discovered that when Ken had been returned to prison after being out for eighteen months, he was erroneously classified as repeat offender, which led his being gathered up in the entire grim episode. (p.157)

When I try to remember what was like at Florence, what comes back to me, other than the faces of the men in the workshop, are the sounds and silences. Florence was a place defined by the almost unbearable noise of confined life, and the prophetic silence of death. (p.111)

But with the new law, and using the previous conviction of a “sex offender” ten years earlier, an offense that occurred with a consenting partner, he can send the young man to the state mental hospital for a indefinite period, perhaps the rest of this life. And by doing this he will gain political credit. (p.158)

She wasn’t talking theory. They recognized the degradation she experienced and what it had done to her emotionally. She bridged all the chasms between gender and age. She exposed the raw edge of what it meant for anybody to be in prison. (p.178)

The Aryan Brotherhood is one of the major reasons why the American prison system as it presently exists must be abolished. The Brotherhood is a cancer, and its host must be destroyed or radically altered or the cancer will continue to spread throughout free society. (p.184)

...the Department of Corrections had just supplied the prison facilities that were housing male inmates with several computers for the classrooms in each unit, depending on the size of the unit. They had supplied the women’s prison with comparable number of sewing machines. (p.192)

What I have come to fear over the years is not the possibility of a riot or any danger from the inmates. I have come to fear incompetence, carelessness, laziness, and a lack of concern on the part of the staff of the prisons. (p.213)

...the longest prison hostage situation in U.S. history...the situation “evolved out of a rich combination of complacency, inexperience, lack of professionalism, inadequate staffing, vague security procedures, poor training, lack of situational awareness, premature promotions, non-competitive pay, ineffective communication, malfunctioning equipment, high inmate-to-officer ratios, bad architecture design and a myriad of other causes.” (p.217)

Prison is one of the few businesses that can retrieve its product and market it again, in some cases many times. It’s a business whether the prison is public or private, and the taxpayer is subsidizing it in either case..(p.218)

The idea that there is somebody in the free world who knows you and cares about your future, especially during the first few confusing weeks after years in prison, can often mean the difference between making it and not making it for the former inmate. (p.222)

It’s inhumane warehousing. (p.223)

And just who is it we are putting in prison, anyway? Do we know? Do we care? A recent study by Human Rights Watch reported in the New York Times concluded that “as many a one in five of the 2.1 million Americans in jail and prison are seriously mentally ill.”(p.224)

..these men in orange. I’ve learned more from them than I ever taught them, and it’s been good stuff. ...They taught me that we are all law breakers and we are all victims of crime. They taught me that growing old is no disgrace, but that a youth, wasted in prison, is a disaster. (p.227)

I want to put my head down on the table in front of me and weep with a pain that will not be comforted and a rage I cannot express. (p.232, last sentence)

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Death penalty