Susan Hill Quotes

A duty to the public must be to stop prisoners reoffending through successful rehabilitation.

I've worked in the prison system for five years, and most of those folks in prison didn't have a direction.

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

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

Unfortunately, the elimination of incentives such as parole, good time credits and funding for college courses, means that fewer inmates participate in and excel in literacy, education, treatment and other development programs.

As soon as I ended up being incarcerated, I said, you know, this is not the life for me.

I used to teach acting in a maximum security men's prison. I worked with guys with the most dysfunctional behavior problems. I probably learned more there than from my prestigious theater degree.

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 universities of the opposition.

After six prison commitments, at the end of those, I was more broken than when I went into the system.

There is one stark fact facing us: three quarters of all crime that results in a caution or sentence happens because of reoffending. We must be fearless in dealing with this.

We are a humane society, and one which believes that we have to help rehabilitate offenders so they turn away from crime.

I would make the case that the vast majority of prisoners leave prison and go back into society. We share that society with them and what sort of people do we want them to be.

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

Being incarcerated is truly very serious, and it has changed my life to such an extent that breaking the cycle has become my sole focus. Jail is definitely not cool. Education is.

I know what it's like to be ignored, and I think that is the big problem about the prison system: These people are being thrown away. There is no sense of rehabilitation. In some places, they are trying to do things. But, in most cases, it's a holding cell.

The second time I went to jail, I was like, 'Okay, this is not the move.'

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

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.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

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

The purpose of punishment is fulfilled, crime is repressed by penalties of just, not tormenting, severity, its repetition is prevented, and hope is given for the reformation of the criminal.

Bad people should be incarcerated.

Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment.