A Quote by Chris Grayling
People who end up in our prisons tend to come from the most difficult backgrounds. They did not have the parental support as they grew up, as many of us enjoyed, and they struggle when they leave prison.
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The prison-industrial complex employs millions of people directly and indirectly. Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, prison guards, construction companies that build prisons, police, probation officers, court clerks, the list goes on and on. Many predominately white rural communities have come to believe that their local economies depend on prisons for jobs.
I think that for those of us who come from oppressed backgrounds and who do our work in marginalized communities, recovering our innocence is one of the most important acts of self-liberation and de-colonization. Not letting the requirement that we adapt to impossible circumstances and unconscionable crimes leave us shackled to the kind of cynicism and armor such that we can't breathe and laugh and magnetize to ourselves all the genius and love and support that we need to transform the situation. That's probably the biggest challenge, is to recover our innocence.
Many other countries have tried this and getting businesses to work in partnership in prisons, in prison and with prison labour, and to actually be able to make an economic return is extremely difficult.
I definitely grew up differently to most of my friends, and that was a little bit of a struggle then. I wouldn't want to change anything about the way I grew up, even though it was a different situation. I still love the way I grew up, and I had an amazing childhood with a really supportive family.
I was born in Owerri and grew up in the east of Nigeria, in Imo state. You could say I was a 'street boy': we grew up on the street, played on the street, did everything out on the street. It was a difficult life altogether, but that's how we grew up.
We have to change public perception of ex-convicts. Most Canadians don't realize that when you come out of prison, you're a complete pariah. You can't get a car loan or money from a bank to start a business. So most end up back in prison within 24 months. It's just so wrong. We need to fix this problem.
I grew up when people were afraid to 'come out' as gay. If you asked me how many gay kids I grew up with or went to school with, I would have said none - which of course could not have been true. The truth is I have no idea how many confused and frightened kids I grew up with. They are still out there.
We have a number of brothers left in the prisons, about 15 of them. And for the most part, they're in bad condition. Most of us are getting older, you know. I believe all of them is 60 years or older. They've been in prison for long periods of time. Many of them should have never been in prison at all. They were framed and illegally convicted.
They are trying to lock up as many of us up as possible to put us in penitentiaries for free labor. You have the government paying private prisons to feed and clothe each inmate, turning it into a damn business. And African Americans are set up for getting arrested.
I grew up in California. I was outside of the city, not directly in it. So I did have an experience of the sky, but for me, it was the idea of space exploration that fueled my interest. I grew up in that age of the astronauts, and I was fascinated that we could leave the Earth.
As a kid, I did some running but especially loved biking and swimming. I grew up on Long Island, and our mom took us all the time to the ocean, so I grew up doing open-water swimming in the Atlantic.
I was the little French boy who grew up hearing people talk of De Gaulle and the Resistance. France against the Nazis! Then when that boy grew up, he began to uncover things. We began to legitimately ask the question, 'What exactly did our parents do during the Occupation?' We discovered it was not the story they were telling us.
After my parents' divorce in the early seventies, I grew up with my mother, who wasn't super educated herself. But there were a lot of kids from the subcontinent in the neighbourhood, many of whom were academic achievers. So my sister and I grew up around them, and both of us did well in school.
So many people grew up with challenges, as I did. There weren't always happy things happening to me or around me. But when you look at the core of goodness within yourself - at the optimism and hope - you realize it comes from the environment you grew up in.
When you live without training for a long time, you end up losing that habit. It is difficult to resume things, even if you have some time to prepare. It is difficult to acquire that rhythm again. Many injuries end up happening.
Both my comedy partner, Steve Punt - who grew up in Reigate and is the son of a civil servant - and I come from similarly suburban backgrounds, and its really what fuels our comedy.
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