Quotes & Sayings About The Penal System

Once the screws left, most of the six or seven boys who had been overpowered by the SAS were not in any fit state to move, never mind talk. In May 1988 Malkie and Sammo and one other boy, whose name escapes me right now, got a total of twenty-seven years between them for mobbing and rioting and assault. — Stephen Richards

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

In the penal system, where many of these people would eventually end up, the rapidly growing problem of petty crime had already led to pressure for harsher, more deterrent policies in the state prisons. Administrators and prison experts had argued in the last years of the Weimar Republic for the indefinite imprisonment or security confinement of habitual criminals whose hereditary degeneracy, it was assumed, rendered them incapable of inprovement. Security confinement was increasingly thought to be the long-term answer to the buden thse offenders supposedly imposed on the community. — Richard J. Evans

I personally could never come to terms with my label of 'Criminally Insane'. Just because of my violent outbursts in prison, don't mean to say I'm mad. Obviously I had become a disruptive element within the penal system. Uncontrollable! Unpredictable! But that don't make insanity! — Stephen Richards

The riot screws did not stop there, they dragged him down the corridor where ten other nameless screws repeatedly coshed him over the head and face and body. Dingus by now was totally out cold, he had received the equivalent injuries of someone who was involved in a car crash. — Stephen Richards

What stood in one corner of the cell was disgusting: two empty disinfectant canisters and one well used and well stained piss pot, the sort of chamber pot that people would train their babies to be potty trained on before they would learn to use the toilet. — Stephen Richards

I keep telling the screws over and over again, 'If you treat a young boy in prison like a dog, keep him in a cell that is like a cage and constantly beat him and bully him, that boy is going to grow up hating yous and the system.' The only thing on his mind will be revenge, maybe it is not revenge on the screws that so frequently bullied and tortured him, but in the boy's eyes he is getting revenge on the uniform, as it all means the same thing in the boy's or man's eyes. — Stephen Richards

The screws are just as bad as us, maybe not now but certainly in the past they used to beat you with their riot batons, strip you naked, cuff your hands behind your backs and then take shots of kicking you in the head and body until you were knocked out. — Stephen Richards

The public execution did not re-establish justice; it reactivated power. In the seventeenth century, and even in the early eighteenth century, it was not, therefore, with all its theatre of terror, a lingering hang-over from an earlier age. Its ruthlessness, its spectacle, its physical violence, its unbalanced play of forces, its meticulous ceremonial, its entire apparatus were inscribed in the political functioning of the penal system. — Michel Foucault

All cities have one key resource: the special abilities of the people who live in them. You just have to find out what they are. In the Australian city of Adelaide, for example, which is overshadowed by Sydney and Melbourne, I discovered a number of experts in the penal system. I advised them to work with these special skills. — Charles Landry

Rockweiler (nickname) has settled down over the years, he is a man mountain, he stands some six-and-a-half foot tall, and is round about eighteen or nineteen stones in weight. He too works in Barlinnie, this dog was responsible for giving the Wendy House seg unit the tough name tag, as he dished out the beatings to some very hard prisoners in the past. I can't take that away from him, but he was a bit of a shit bag as well because he wore the full riot body armour when he offered to fight. — Stephen Richards

The education of youth should be watched with the most scrupulous attention. [I]t is much easier to introduce and establish an effectual system ... than to correct by penal statutes the ill effects of a bad system ... The education of youth ... lays the foundations on which both law and gospel rest for success. — Noah Webster

Gary Moore is another legendary figure of sheer violence. In prison, Gary has spent most of his adult life inside one jail or another. When, on the odd occasion, he does get out of prison, it doesn't take him long to go on a murderous campaign of total terror. Gary has been charged and stood trial for some three or four different murders. — Stephen Richards

Another man of sheer violence was the late Stewart Boyd, he was killed in a car accident over in Spain's Costa del Sol shortly after being released from prison in June 2003. But he certainly left his mark on the city streets of Glasgow. He was a force to be reckoned with, a gang enforcer. Murder and witness intimidation were high on his criminal charge sheet. — Stephen Richards

Once I managed to get to a sink, staring up out of it at my empty-stomached face was a collection of facial hair, discarded razor blades, plasters, snot and phlegm, all fused together into one stomach churning mass. I retched, but nothing came up. My eyes watered at the festering sight and my stomach was in knots as I ran my hand over the surface of the water. It was freezing cold. I flung the cruel liquid over my hair, then, as if straight from Oliver Twist, I asked one of the two screws that were standing over us like bouncers, 'Is there any toothpaste, sir? — Stephen Richards

I'll tell you, the screws' faces painted an even greater picture than my words can describe. We kept emptying our pots in the hall for two weeks before the screws started emptying our piss pots for us, but this didn't last too long after we started calling them bellhops. — Stephen Richards

There is no getting away from the fact, he is one of only a few screws in the system who are the real McCoy. Anyone reading this book who has spent time in Scottish prisons will no doubt agree, this chimp is up for it just as much as the prisoners. I personally would love to see more screws like him, as he doesn't bother with all this shitty report piss. If you want to fight him, he comes into your cell, one-on-one, man-to-man. — Stephen Richards

We have a legal system, and we have a penal code. We have the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, and people should respect this. — Adel Al-Jubeir

Penal law was not created by the common people, nor by the peasantry, nor by the proletariat, but entirely by the bourgeoisie as an important tactical weapon in this system of divisions which they wished to introduce. — Michel Foucault

Man, I'm a conspiracy theorist by nature. You can't experience the federal penal system and not be somewhat skeptical. — T.I.

Once the cons were in the cell, they'd pull razors or homemade daggers out and rob the YOs of their trainers, leather jackets or jewellery. You couldn't placate them; it would be akin to expecting not to be bitten from a Rhodesian Ridgeback whilst petting it! Bar L was full of rough, colourful and out-of-control junkies who wouldn't think twice about stabbing you or slashing you just to get what you had on your feet to pay for their next hit of smack. — Stephen Richards

I waltzed into the hall with my escort of five screws like some rapper with his well-paid entourage. A fiendish looking, little bastard with blonde hair and a crooked nose came up to me and said, 'Okay, Holland, welcome to Shotts. Welcome to the man-eater! — Stephen Richards

Adrian (not sure if real Christian name?) was a PTI in Perth Prison before he came to work in the special units with us. Adrian was a gentleman, but he was also a very, very hard man that didn't take any shit. He is now working up in Inverness Prison, but I can tell you, this man can go for fun. I have witnessed him in action, I have been about all the diggers in Scotland ten times over and I would put this man up there with the best of them for a roll about with the prisoner. — Stephen Richards

Thirteen years have past since 1993, and I still have not seen one single book, documentary or anything to the biggest epidemic in Scottish, British prison history. I would go as far and say, no other prison in the world had fourteen men catching the HIV virus at the same time. — Stephen Richards

Big Rab has worked in Barlinnie's Wendy House for over seven and a half years. The average time a screw works in the seg blocks is two years, this man has seen it and done it all. Most prisoners will agree, he isn't a dog either but can be when he wants. He has had legendary roll abouts with some of Scotland's hardest criminals but at the end of it he doesn't hold any grudges. — Stephen Richards

I believe the most degrading thing in the world is to be treated worse than a starving dog by five growling, muscle-bound thugs, better known as screws! — Stephen Richards

You know, one thing I learned about actors and actresses - I mean the big stars. They can be the most ignorant people if they get caught up in it very young. Some of them are damn near illiterate. And emotionally they're like people who have grown up in the penal system. I mean, they cannot control their emotions at all. — Anne Rampling

After a couple of weeks in Polmont, I started to become more assertive and began arguing with older, bigger boys. I loved it. This is where my ugly side would make some scary and unpredictable appearances. Even to this day, I can go from a happy-go-lucky cunt to the devil on acid. — Stephen Richards

In Polmont, everyone was acting the hard man and giving it the large. I had to fight or cosh or do something to be accepted. I can tell you, it was better to be in a gang than being on your own, and I'd do anything in Polmont, no questions asked! — Stephen Richards

I do all I can to let my students feel as normal as possible, as far from institutionalized. I see how easy it is to allow this conveyor belt of incarceration bring them from my facility to an adult detention, often for the rest of their lives. — Thomm Quackenbush

Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it? — Victor Hugo

For example, in the state of California, it is illegal to have sexual intercourse with someone under the age of 18; yet, in the same state, having sex with a dead body (i.e., necrophilia), does not have a specific criminal code within the penal system (Hickey, 2005). — Catherine Purcell

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

It was so funny, I witnessed this with my own eyes, Andy and the screw were like two WWF wrestlers, we were locked behind the grill gates cheering Andy on, the chants started. The chant was to the tune of Jingle Bells and went like this: Stab a screw, stab a screw, stab a screw today, all that fun it is to stab a screw on New Year's Day, but it was only 29 December. — Stephen Richards

I don't know whether it's the finest public housing in America or the crown jewel of the American penal system. — William J. Clinton

I got my lawyer to visit me in the jail. He couldn't believe the bruising over my body, so he pulled the governor and asked why I was covered in marks. The governor said to my lawyer that it was 'self-inflicted' and was caused by my 'running into walls'. That part was disproved because walls don't leave footprints all over your body. — Stephen Richards

This was my first time in Govan. You could smell and taste the thick smog in the air. The Blue Triangle was a new high-tech building, and it didn't look right standing there in front of older and more historical buildings. The Blue Triangle may have looked great from the outside, but once inside, to my horror, it was full of young teenage boys and girls full of deep and dark depression — Stephen Richards

Barlinnie Prison stands on dark and bloody ground. It is a temple of lost souls, and a place of living nightmares. It's been the breaker of many a man's dreams for more than a century. This prison works to a model of penitence with no pretence of rehabilitation. The criminal population that society has forsaken has filled this once, seemingly, bottomless pit to overflowing with their despair and nightmares of pain. More specifically, it is the battleground of an undeclared war that still ravages to this day, between the screws and the cons. The screws, backed by their authority, would use violence, but in return the prisoners would have to resort to their cunning, beguile, and the odd sudden act of violence. — Stephen Richards

Aberdeenshire's Peterhead jail housed the hardest, badest, meanest motherfucker prisoners in the Scottish prison system. So no one was surprised when the pressure pot jail finally erupted in to violence that has not been seen or equalled since. — Stephen Richards

By the time you're an adult, you're used to seeing your friends disappear into their five-year plans. They drop out to get married, have babies, go to grad school, get divorced. They start a band or enter the penal system. They vanish for years at a time - some come back, some don't. Some of them you wait for and some you let go. Sometimes the only way they come back is in a song. — Rob Sheffield

At that, every boy on that side of the hall let out a big cheer for the two of them. This went on for about three or four hours before the cold had got the better of the two of them. Without breaking any rooftop siege records, the bedraggled and wet pair came down into the arms of the awaiting riot screws. And surprisingly, for a change, they never suffered any beatings; they got taken to the digger and put on a rule, pending police investigation. Some nine months later, the two kings of the roof stood trial and received eighteen months apiece on top of their sentence ... oh, and the roofing contractor was ecstatically happy. — Stephen Richards

In his 1973 "literary investigation," The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn exposed the practices of the Soviet penal system: "If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty or forty years had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings, that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath; that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the 'secret brand'); that a man's genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov's plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums. — Donnie Eichar

There's a difference between what I would like to have been and what I would have been. I always fantasized about being a reforming judge or prison governor (I think that the UK penal system is a disgrace) - but it's fantasy. — Mary Beard