Rolf Harris Quotes

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

I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary.

By and large, prisons are survivable, though hope is indeed what you need least upon entering here; a lump of sugar would be more useful.

My father, David Gilbert, is in prison in New York. He is lucky that he has a single cell, not shared with another person. His cell is about eight feet by eight feet.

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

I've definitely become more aware of the penal system and more aware of what life could be like inside a prison.

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

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.

All emphasis in American prisons is on punishment, retribution, and disparagement, and almost none is on rehabilitation.

I know prisons from the inside.

When I was incarcerated at Alderson in West Virginia for a five-month term, they had a ceramics class.

Well I certainly have learned and I hope I'm moving on and certainly two years of prison was a terrible punishment.

When you're in prison, and we're left to our own devices, you're stripped of everything, and you really get to see who these people are, the good and the bad.

I've wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations - the atmospheric pressure, you might say - of what it is to be seriously a long-term prisoner in an American prison.

I was kind of excited about going to jail the first time and I learnt some great dialogue.

I spent my first three weeks there on a wing with 21 murderers. I met some very evil people there but also some men who'd had no upbringing, no chance in life.

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 have real cliched ideas of what prison life is like. It is not a happy place. It's a desperate, sad situation.

When you go to jail, you are under the supervision of the state. You are housed with people who are criminals, so that becomes the expectation. People learn to become better criminals in jail and prison.

When you go to prison, you don't feel like a superstar. It really humbles you as a person.

Prison is not meant to be comfortable. It's not meant to be somewhere anyone would ever want to go back to.

It was very cold in jail. But inmates were good. They shared their stories with me.

What do people have against convicts? Is living together in the pen of freedom, where young people engage in mutual psychology, any more beautiful?

I had a lot of time and the first year I was in prison, I tried to get the party to stop the shooting, to stop the talk about the gun thing.

Monsieur' to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea; ignominy thirsts for respect.