What I did, you know, being away from my family, letting so many people down. I let myself down, not being out on the football field, being in a prison bed, in a prison bunk, writing letters home, you know. That wasn't my life.
In the very progress of society, the prison has in the very nature of things undergone some improvement, but there are vast stretches yet to be covered before the prison becomes, if it ever does, an institution for the reclamation and rehabilitation of erring and unfortunate men and women.
If letting go, if letting people and things work themselves out in the way that they needed to without your help was the most important thing, then it was also the hardest.
At the age of 46, in my sixth prison term, it was the second prison I was in - California Rehabilitation Center. The California Civil Education program kind of opened up all of the experiences that that I had dealt with in my life, that I had experienced.
And as long as we believe what we believe - until that is questioned - there's no progress as a human race. Again, we still have war. So, effective rehabilitation is to question what we believe. When that happens, everyone gets out of prison.
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.
We have developed our own approach towards rehabilitating people, involving psychological rehabilitation, social rehab within families and of our Religious Rehabilitation Group.
A friend of mine is chief of staff at a big prison in Georgia. Along with giving me a tour of the prison, she allowed me to meet inmates.
Lots of people think I went to prison. I never went to prison. I was in jail without bail.
In the commercial real estate business, brokers spearhead major accounts. But they wouldn't have customers without the people who oversee construction.
There's definitely a way to fix the prison system. First of all, you gotta get a rehabilitation center in prisons, that every inmate must go through.
People can be in a prison of their own mind. [There are] people who don't have their hearts open to other people's ideas, and can't listen to other people's ideas without feeling like they're being slapped in the face. Those people are more in a prison.
There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor. . . .In the prison you are not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or interest on subjects that they don't understand and don't care about, and therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains.
People down on their luck deserve the best: beautiful surroundings and well-paid professional staff to help them out of their difficulties. Why not train thousands more social workers and let them sit in on claimants' interviews?
Everybody has that thing about them that makes them special, and sometimes we try to dull it down or we don't always want to expose it, and maybe we've been taught that way or whatever. It's just a matter of letting it out and letting it go and letting people in on it.
I've met many irresponsible people in my life but never an irresponsible cat.