“The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that the prison performs—it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.”

— Angela Davis , Are Prisons Obsolete?

Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)

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Angela Davis 55

American political activist, scholar, and author 1944

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“On the whole, people tend to take prisons for granted. It is difficult to imagine life without them At the same time, there is reluctance to face the realities hidden within them, a fear of thinking about what happens inside them. Thus, the prison is present in our lives and, at the same time, it is absent from our lives. To think about this simultaneous presence and absence is to begin to acknowledge the part played by ideology in shaping the way we interact with our social surroundings. We take prisons for granted but are often afraid to face the realities they produce.”

Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?

Source: Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Chapter One

“Let us be clear. Prison works.”

Michael Howard (1941) British politician

It ensures that we are protected from murderers, muggers and rapists, and it makes many who are tempted to commit crime think twice.
Colin Brown, "Howard seeks to placate 'angry majority'", The Independent, October 7, 1993
Speech to the Conservative Party conference, October 6, 1993

“There were considerably over 100 prisoners now. It was a problem to get them back safely to our own lines. There were so many of them, there was danger of our own artillery mistaking us for a German counterattack and opening upon us. I sure was relieved when we ran into the relief squads that had been sent forward through the brush to help us.”

Alvin C. York (1887–1964) United States Army Medal of Honor recipient

Account of 8 October 1918
Diary of Alvin York

“There were considerably over 100 prisoners now. It was a problem to get them back safely to our own lines. There were so many of them, there was danger of our own artillery mistaking us for a German counterattack and opening upon us. I sure was relieved when we ran into the relief squads that had been sent forward through the brush to help us.”

Alvin C. York (1887–1964) United States Army Medal of Honor recipient

Account of 8 October 1918
Diary of Alvin York

“Some times I think this whole world
Is one big prison yeard
Some of us are prisoners
The rest of us are guards”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“Our universities should produce good criticism; they do not—or, at best, they do so only as federal prisons produce counterfeit money: a few hardened prisoners are more or less surreptitiously continuing their real vocations.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Contemporary Poetry Criticism”, p. 62
No Other Book: Selected Essays (1999)

“The prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited. Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison. There are thus real and often quite complicated connections between the deindustrialization of the economy—a process that reached its peak during the 1980s—and the rise of mass imprisonment, which also began to spiral during the Reagan-Bush era. However, the demand for more prisons was represented to the public in simplistic terms. More prisons were needed because there was more crime. Yet many scholars have demonstrated that by the time the prison construction boom began, official crime statistics were already falling.”

Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?

Source: Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Chapter One

“No system can ever relieve us of our personal responsibility, and it is essential that we all recognise the need to change the way we live.”

Shaun Chamberlin

What We Are Fighting For: A Radical Collective Manifesto (2012) https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745332857/what-we-are-fighting-for/

“At the root of our troubles is a cultural complex whose six main elements make up a "Six-Sided Prison" that traps us all. In Part I[, ] I try to name and describe the six sides of the Prison: patriarchal attitudes, egocentricity, scientific single vision, the bureaucratic mentality, nationalism, and the big-city outlook. Capitalism and socialism are, I argue, both rooted in the Prison (which predates capitalism by hundreds of years) – though neither needs to be.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Racism, militarism, exploitation, ecocide, etc., are also rooted in the Prison.
Page 7.
New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society (1978)

“In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Nuns Fret Not, l. 8 (1806).

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