Michael Portillo Quotes

I don't know what goes on in prison. I've never been in trouble with the police in my life.

Maybe I won't stay out of prison. Who knows?

We're recycling very dangerous criminals over and over again.

I went to prison, I paid my bill.

First we pin the convict's badge on him: then we examine his case.

I spent five years of my youth in prison - some very bad prisons.

Don't hire a prison consultant.

As a law-enforcement official, as a politician, you are always going to have in the back of your mind the fear that someone you release will end up committing another crime, potentially a serious crime, during a period when they otherwise would have been incarcerated.

I don't ever want to go back to prison.

I think we will be safer when we can concentrate law enforcement and criminal justice resources and energies on those individuals who truly need, for the safety of society... to be incarcerated.

We've got to clear some of the room out of the prisons so we can put the bad guys in there, like the pedophiles and the politicians.

We have determined as a society, as a country, as a people, that the incarceration and the supervision and the specific fines for a particular crime are that person's debt to society.

So for you people who are filled with fear that I might someday be released: breathe easy, I don't see it happening.

I've always been tremendously interested in criminal law. It goes to a deep interest I have in prisons and the criminal element, and what we do as a society with it. I've always been touched by the idea of criminality.

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

The newest "fad" of the penologists is "indeterminate sentences".... This plan ... will work first rate if God will agree to act as the discharging officer. It is hardly likely, though, that he would accept the position: he has long been out of politics.

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.

All the former prisoners are now the government.

I've never been in prison. I've been in jail a lot. But I've never actually been sentenced to anything.

Right outside of Kansas City is Leavenworth, and there are, like, five prisons there. It was kind of the tapestry of my childhood. I was always fascinated. I wanted to know what was behind those walls.

Prison is a recruitment center for the army of crime. That is what it achieves.

None of my peers avoided prison. None of 'em.

I think of my brother just out of prison again. He will have spent ten years of the last 30 in prison.

Prison has a universal fascination. It's a real-life horror story because, given the right set of circumstances, anyone could find themselves behind bars.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.