Clint Smith Quotes

Prisons are fascinating places, especially when the inmates are educated white-collar types.

Prisons are universities of the opposition.

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

I'm eternally grateful to the penal system in California for saving my life.

Think about how much it costs to incarcerate someone. Do we want them just sitting in prison, lifting weights, becoming violent and thinking about the next crime? Or do we want them having a little purpose in life and learning a skill?

Prisons are out of public sight, and most often out of mind. But the vast majority of prisoners will at some point leave jail and rejoin our communities, which is why what happens inside matters to us all.

We must do better by offenders who are sent to prison to make them less likely to return.

I actually worked with an organization called Drama Club that works with incarcerated teens and youth in a detention center and in Rikers Island, which a lot of people don't know that teens have been incarcerated in Rikers Island.

Incarceration is supposed to keep the community safe from your behavior.

The prison systems in this country actually are exploitative and they are not in any way rehabilitative.

I had an empathy for prisoners and did concerts for them back when I thought that it would make a difference - you know? - that they really were there to be rehabilitated.

Place all prisons near a high-road, where the suffering and disfigured offenders can be seen

Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo—obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.

Prison matures you.

The notion that we should take away educational programs in prisons in order to be tough on crime makes no sense.

The way to reform has always led through prison.

The head of a penal institution is more important to the progress of society than the president of a university. His task is more difficult: he must be more resourceful; he must have a combination of culture, education, business ability, and personal character of the highest order; all backed up by a physique that will carry him through continuous experiences such as will break the health, vision, and optimism of most men.

A reform in the system of criminal jurisprudence, by which the death penalty shall no longer be inflicted; and by which, during that term, a portion of the prison employment shall be for, and the product thereof be faithfully paid over to, the support of the criminal’s family; and by which our so-called prisons shall be virtually transformed into vast reformatory workshops, from which the unfortunate may emerge to be useful members of society, instead of the alienated citizens they now are.

We spend $94,000 per prisoner [per year]. There is a tension between punishment and making people’s lives better and I don’t actually think that we have done the second part well. We put people in prison and expect them to come out

I'll stay in my house and watch 'Lockup,' the prison show.

The regime in too many prisons is one of idleness, and locking up someone from such a background in idleness virtually guarantees re-offending. Instead there needs to be a full day's work every weekday in either the workshops or the education department or preferably a mixture of both.

I've taught in prison; I've counseled people... I've been arrested; I've been to the psychiatrist.

I don't often do a lot of that kind of research, but when it's something specific like 'Oz' - which I fortunately did not have a lot of experience with - I will. I read 'The Hot House,' about being on the inside at Leavenworth prison.

Incarcerating non-violent offenders in the same population as more dangerous criminals has the effect of inculcating the former into a culture of criminality common among the latter, making them more of a risk to public safety upon release than when they originally went in.

I don't even think jail helps Gucci Mane. It clearly doesn't.