Locked Up In Jail Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Locked Up In Jail. Here they are! All 61 of them:

I, had an excellent instructor. One that you currently have locked up. If you want to talk about skills going to waste, then go look in your own jail.
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
I'd watched too many schoolmates graduate into mental institutions, into group homes and jails, and I knew that locking people up was paranormal - against normal, not beside it. Locks didn't cure; they strangled.
Scott Westerfeld (The Last Days (Peeps, #2))
I need you to know I never meant it. I said it because I thought that’s what you’re supposed to say, but it didn’t mean anything. And it’s different with you. This is the first time I’ve been scared. Scared you’ll change your mind. Scared I’ll screw it up. Aces, Cress, I’m terrified of you.” Her stomach fluttered. He didn’t look terrified. “Here’s the thing.” Thorne crawled over her legs and lay down beside her, boots and all. “You deserve better than some thief who’s going to end up in jail again. Everyone knows it. Even I know it. But you seem determined to believe I’m actually a decent guy who’s halfway worthy of you. So, what scares me most”—he twisted a lock of her hair between his fingers—“is that someday even you will realize that you can do better.
Marissa Meyer (Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, #4))
I may be, tied up, but at least, I am HIS. I may be hurting, But I am HIS, I may be reluctant, but I am HIS, I may be lonely, but I am HIS, I may be frustrated, but I am HIS, That’s why I am praising Him, because I’m glad He tied me up. He stopped me from doing the things I would have done, that would’ve messed up myself. When I look at how my friends got loosed, I thank Him for tying me up. When I look at how the neighborhood boys are locked up in jail, I thank Him for tying me up. I am not happy about it then, but I’m glad about it now. When I think about the person I almost married, When I think about the job I almost got, When I think about the people who wouldn’t let me join their clique, When I think about the people who stops talking to me, I thank Him for tying me up. I thank Him for the rope that got me tied up.
T.D. Jakes
You deserve better than some thief who's going to end up in jail again. Everyone knows it. Even I know it. But you seem determined to believe I'm a actually a decent guy who's halfway worthy of you. So, what scares me most" - he twisted a lock of hair between his fingers - "is that someday even you will realize that you can do better." "Thorne..." "Not to worry." He kissed the lock of hair. "I am a criminal mastermind, I have a plan." Clearing his throat, he started to check things off in the air. "First, get a legitimate job - check. Legally buy my ship - in progress. Prove that I'm hero material by helping Cinder save the world - oh, wait, I did that already." He winked. "Oh, and I have to stop stealing things, but that's probably a given. So I figure, by the time you realize how much I don't deserve you... I might kind of deserve you
Marissa Meyer (Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, #4))
Anybody who thinks that 'it doesn't matter who's President' has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid war on the other side of the world--or been beaten and gassed by Police for trespassing on public property--or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons--or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.
Hunter S. Thompson
I merely want to put you in a jail," said his Lyctor, now meditative, "and fill up the jail with acid once for every time you made a frivolous remark, or ate peanuts in a Cohort Admiralty meeting, or said, 'What would I know, I'm only God.' Then at the end of a thousand years, you would say, 'Mercy, I have learned not to do any of these things, because I hated the acid you put on me.' And I would say, 'That is why I did it, Lord. I did it for you, and for your empire.' I often think about this," she finished.
Tamsyn Muir (Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2))
You're asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm's way her whole life long? The answer is no, you can't. But nobody else can either. Not a state home, that's for sure. For heaven's sake, the best they can do is turn their heads while the kids learn to pick locks and snort hootch, and then try to keep them out of jail. Nobody can protect a child from the world. That's why it's the wrong thing to ask, if you're really trying to make a decision." So what's the right thing to ask?" Do I want to try? Do I think it would be interesting, maybe even enjoyable in the long run, to share my life with this kid and give her my best effort and maybe, when all's said and done, end up with a good friend.
Barbara Kingsolver (The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1))
it seems a shame to have to sneak to get to the truth.To make the truth such a dirty old nasty thing.You gotta sneak to get to the truth, the truth is condemned.The truth is in the gas chamber.The truth has been in your stockyards.Your slaughterhouses.The truth has been in your reservations, building your railroads, emtying your garbage.The truth is in your ghettos.In your jails.In your young love,not in your courts or congress where the old set judgement on the young.What the hell do the old know about the young?They put a picture of old George on the dollar and tell you that he's your father, worship him.Look at the madness that goes on, you can't prove anything that happened yesterday.Now is the only thing that's real.Everyday, every reality is a new reality.Every new reality is a new horizon,a brand new experience of living.I got a note last night from a friend of mine.He writes in this note that he's afraid of what he might have to do in order to save his reality, as i save mine.You can't prove anything.There's nothing to prove.Every man judges himself.He knows what he is. You know what you are, as i know what i am,we all know what we are.Nobody can stand in judgement, they can play like they're standing in judgement.They can play like they stand in judgement and take you off and control the masses, with your human body.They can lock you up in penitentiaries and cages and put you in crosses like they did in the past,but it doesn't amount to anything. What they're doing is, they're only persecuting a reflection of themselves. They're persecuting what they can't stand to look at in themselves,the truth.
Charles Manson
The main difference is that the enlightened believe that the poor criminal should be rehabilitated while the righteous believe that the immoral criminal should be locked up in jail. Since almost the only available system of rehabilitation in America is to be locked up in jail, the difference remains highly abstract.
William Ryan (Blaming the Victim)
But madness? That small remnant of altered consciousness, pure or in response to circumstances. Circumstances of life, even those of the body itself and its chemistry. How cruel and stupid to punish this as we do with ostracism and fear, to have forged a network of fear, strong as the locks and bars of a back ward. This is the jail we could all end up in. And we know it. And watch our step. For a lifetime. We behave. A fantastic and entire system of social control, by the threat of example as effective over the general population as detention centers in dictatorships, the image of the madhouse floats through every mind for the course of its lifetime.
Kate Millett
False humility is a form of psychosis which was imprinted on most of us since birth. It is a mental illness because it locks us in a victim state of keeping our light turned down, denying who we really are and silently begging for permission to simply show up as ourselves in the world. But there is good news. This is a jail whose lock is broken. We can walk free whenever we know the truth, and by so doing we show others an example of an end to madness. An example of freedom.
Jacob Nordby
I wish I'd been accepted sooner and better. When I was younger, not being accepted made me enraged, but now, I am not inclined to dismantle my history. If you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes--and we become attached to the heroic strain in our personal history. We choose our own lives. It is not simply that we decide on the behaviors that construct our experience; when given our druthers, we elect to be ourselves. Most of us would like to be more successful or more beautiful or wealthier, and most people endure episodes of low self-esteem or even self-hatred. We despair a hundred times a day. But we retain the startling evolutionary imperative for the fact of ourselves, and with that splinter of grandiosity we redeem our flaws. These parents have, by and large, chosen to love their children, and many of them have chosen to value their own lives, even though they carry what much of the world considers an intolerable burden. Children with horizontal identities alter your self painfully; they also illuminate it. They are receptacles for rage and joy-even for salvation. When we love them, we achieve above all else the rapture of privileging what exists over what we have merely imagined. A follower of the Dalai Lama who had been imprisoned by the Chinese for decades was asked if he had ever been afraid in jail, and he said his fear was that he would lose compassion for his captors. Parents often think that they've captured something small and vulnerable, but the parents I've profiled here have been captured, locked up with their children's madness or genius or deformity, and the quest is never to lose compassion. A Buddhist scholar once explained to me that most Westerners mistakenly think that nirvana is what you arrive at when your suffering is over and only an eternity of happiness stretches ahead. But such bliss would always be shadowed by the sorrow of the past and would therefore be imperfect. Nirvana occurs when you not only look forward to rapture, but also gaze back into the times of anguish and find in them the seeds of your joy. You may not have felt that happiness at the time, but in retrospect it is incontrovertible. For some parents of children with horizontal identities, acceptance reaches its apogee when parents conclude that while they supposed that they were pinioned by a great and catastrophic loss of hope, they were in fact falling in love with someone they didn't yet know enough to want. As such parents look back, they see how every stage of loving their child has enriched them in ways they never would have conceived, ways that ar incalculably precious. Rumi said that light enters you at the bandaged place. This book's conundrum is that most of the families described here have ended up grateful for experiences they would have done anything to avoid.
Andrew Solomon (Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity)
One day you’re going to get arrested, and when you do, don’t call me. I’ll tell the police to lock you up just to teach you a lesson.” Because there were some black parents who’d actually do that, not pay their kid’s bail, not hire their kid a lawyer—the ultimate tough love. But it doesn’t always work, because you’re giving the kid tough love when maybe he just needs love. You’re trying to teach him a lesson, and now that lesson is the rest of his life.
Trevor Noah
My letters seeking a job, though truthful, diminished the full truth. Face would blanch if the facts had been complete: "Dear Sir," I thought. "Do you have a position for a journeyman burglar, con man, forger and car thief; also with experience as armed robber, pimp, card cheat and several other things. I smoked marijuana at twelve (in the 40's) and shot heroin at sixteen. I have no experience with LSD and methedrine. They came to popularity since my imprisonment. I've buggered pretty young boys and feminine homosexuals (but only when locked up away from women). In the idiom of jails, prisons and gutters (some plush gutters) I'm a motherfucker! Not literally, for I don't remember my mother. In my world the term, used as I used it, is a boast of being hell on wheels, outrageously unpredictable, a virtuoso of crime. Of course by being a motherfucker in that world I'm a piece of garbage in yours. Do you have a job?
Edward Bunker (No Beast So Fierce)
Finally, we spend lots of money. Spending on jails and prisons by state and federal governments has risen from $6.9 billion in 1980 to nearly $80 billion today. Private prison builders and prison service companies have spent millions of dollars to persuade state and local governments to create new crimes, impose harsher sentences, and keep more people locked up so that they can earn more profits. Private profit has corrupted incentives to improve public safety, reduce the costs of mass incarceration, and most significantly, promote rehabilitation of the incarcerated.
Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption)
His life was absurd. He went all over the world accepting all kinds of bondage and escaping. He was roped to a chair. He escaped. He was chained to a ladder. He escaped. He was handcuffed, his legs were put in irons, he was tied up in a strait jacket and put in a locked cabinet. He escaped. He escaped from bank vaults, nailed-up barrels, sewn mailbags; he escaped from a zinc-lined Knabe piano case, a giant football, a galvanized iron boiler, a rolltop desk, a sausage skin. His escapes were mystifying because he never damaged or appeared to unlock what he escaped from. The screen was pulled away and there he stood disheveled but triumphant beside the inviolate container that was supposed to have contained him. He waved to the crowd. He escaped from a sealed milk can filled with water. He escaped from a Siberian exile van. From a Chinese torture crucifix. From a Hamburg penitentiary. From an English prison ship. From a Boston jail. He was chained to automobile tires, water wheels, cannon, and he escaped. He dove manacled from a bridge into the Mississippi, the Seine, the Mersey, and came up waving. He hung upside down and strait-jacketed from cranes, biplanes and the tops of buildings. He was dropped into the ocean padlocked in a diving suit fully weighted and not connected to an air supply, and he escaped. He was buried alive in a grave and could not escape, and had to be rescued. Hurriedly, they dug him out. The earth is too heavy, he said gasping. His nails bled. Soil fell from his eyes. He was drained of color and couldn't stand. His assistant threw up. Houdini wheezed and sputtered. He coughed blood. They cleaned him off and took him back to the hotel. Today, nearly fifty years since his death, the audience for escapes is even larger.
E.L. Doctorow (Ragtime)
My necessities were books. I read a book at school, another to and from school, yet another at the beach, which was the closest escape from my father’s dying. Though when I walked alone it was far. Though I wasn’t allowed to walk alone when younger—so young that my concern wasn’t the danger to myself but to the books I’d bring, because they weren’t mine, they were everyone’s, entrusted to me in return for exemplary behavior, and if I lost even a single book, or let even its corner get nicked by a jitney, the city would come, the city itself, and lock me up in that grim brick jail that, in every feature, resembled the library.
Joshua Cohen (Book of Numbers: A Novel)
He probably wouldn’t do any jail time at all, not with the perennial War on Drugs in full force. Too many dope smokers and pill poppers to lock up instead.
Cliff Jones Jr. (Dreck)
The thing that give me the mos' trouble was, it didn' make no sense. You don't look for no sense when lightnin' kills a cow, or it comes up a flood. That's jus' the way things is. But when a bunch of men take an' lock you up four years, it ought to have some meaning. Men is supposed to think things out. Here they put me in, an' keep me an feed me four years. That ought to either make me so I won't do her again or else punish me so I'll be afraid to do her again"- he paused- "but if Herb or anybody else come for me, I'd do her again. Do her before I could figure her out. Specially if I was drunk. That sort of senselessness kind a worries a man.
John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)
A prison chaplain in the West of England confessed he had given up one prisoner as hopeless, so stubborn was he against any approach by him, and known throughout the jail as the most truculent and obstinate troublemaker. But one day the governor was told of a visitor who insisted on seeing him. To his surprise, it was a little girl. "He's my daddy," she explained, "It's his birthday." The governor allowed the prisoner to be sent for. "Daddy," said the child as he was brought in, "this was your birthday, so I wanted to come and see you." Then taking a lock of hair out of her pocket, she offered it to him. "I had no money to buy a present for you. But I brought this, a lock of my own hair." The prisoner broke down and clasped her in his arms, sobbing. He became a changed man after that and guarded, as his most precious possession, the lock of hair that reminded him that somebody still loved him.
Francis Gay
Booker Sistrunk sat awkwardly with his hands behind him and continued the mouthing: “You oughtta be ashamed of yourself, treating a brother like this.” “The white guy’s gettin’ the same treatment,” Ozzie said. “You’re violating my civil rights.” “And you’re violatin’ mine with your mouth. Now shut up or I’ll lock you under the jail. We got a little basement down there.
John Grisham (Sycamore Row)
In county jail there are things happening … arraignments, meetings with lawyers, preparing for trial, and so forth. There’s action going on, and while the system has decided you need to be locked up, you’re still going to be able to present your side of things to a jury of your peers. It gives you something to look forward to. State prison is different; nobody is talking to you, your legal boat has sailed, and it feels like the world has forgotten you. Which, of course, it has.
David Rosenfelt (Muzzled (Andy Carpenter #21))
I had to watch my uncle get strung up when I was a child,” she finally said after she returned from the faraway place in her mind. “The white man would only sell us the rotten fruit and vegetables from their bug-infested baskets. We had to collect that mess from the back of the store like we were a pack of wild mutts picking through garbage. My uncle had had enough of his apples having maggots crawling out of them, so he started farming his own vegetables for us to eat. The white man didn’t like that. Not. One. Bit. It’s amazing how their minds work. The way their minds work is the reason we call them devils because only a devil could think the way they do. They were mad about the loss of profit because they no longer had us buying the filthy rot they peddled. “My uncle produced such a high quality of fruits and vegetables that he had white folks coming to buy from him. It wasn’t too long after this started, those devils came in their white hoods and burned his garden to ash. Then they strung him up. We were forced to watch my uncle dangle from the neck while he pissed and shit himself. God will forgive my mouth saying it because he knows I only speak the truth. The evilness that resides inside the mind of those devils still exists in the minds of the ones who wear cop’s uniforms and judge’s robes. This is what our boys are up against. Our boys are at war! They freed us from our chains, so that they could lock us in their jails.
D.E. Eliot (Own Son)
Sending a teenager to jail costs more than it would to send him to Eton College, the private boarding school in England that educated Princes William and Harry. It seems especially odd that the United States, a country with a proud history of limited government, is so unquestioningly generous when it comes to this particular public service, on which it blows $80 billion a year. Does it really need to lock up five times as many people per capita as Britain, six times as many as Canada, and nine times as many as Germany
Tom Wainwright (Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel)
It seems to me just as imbecile, just as infernal, to have to go to the office on Monday,' said Jonathan, 'as it always has done and always will do. To spend all the best years of one's life sitting on a stool from nine to five, scratching in somebody's ledger! It's a queer use to make of one's...one and only life, isn't it? Or do I fondly dream?' He rolled over on the grass and looked up at Linda. 'Tell me, what is the difference between my life and that of an ordinary prisoner? The only difference I can see is that I put myself in jail and nobody's ever going to let me out. That's a more intolerable situation than the other. For if I'd been--pushed in, against my will--kicking, even--once the door was locked, or at any rate in five years or so, I might have accepted the fact and begun to take an interest in the flight of flies or counting the warder's steps along the passage with particular attention to variations of tread and so on. But as it is, I'm like an insect that's flown into a room of its own accord. I dash against the walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do everything on God's earth, in fact, except fly out again. And all the while I'm thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it is, "The shortness of life! The shortness of life!" I've only one night or one day, and there's this vast dangerous garden, waiting out there, undiscovered, unexplored. [...] I'm exactly like that insect again. For some reason, it's not allowed, it's forbidden, it's against the insect law, to stop banging and flopping and crawling up the pane even for an instant.
Katherine Mansfield (Stories (Vintage Classics))
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax.
Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience)
My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with—for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel—and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. How shall he ever know well that he is and does as an officer of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he will treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborlines without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action. I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name—if ten honest men only—ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this co-partnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America.
Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience)
Dear Young Black Males, Could you imagine standing in front of a judge and hearing the words, “I now sentence you to 10 years, 20 years, 15 to LIFE, 25 to LIFE, LIFE without the possibility of parole, and/or DEATH?” Could you imagine being locked up with grown, yoked up men? Could you imagine being raped over and over again? Could you imagine other inmates taking what your family or loved ones sent you? Could you imagine being degraded as a person, and there’s nothing you can do about it? Could you imagine being made to do things that nobody should have to EVER endure? I don’t care how hard you think you are, jail and prison is NOT for young black males. And to be honest, many grown men get turned out in jail and prison too. Please think! Think about the consequences of the choices you make. It’s just NOT worth it! If you think that you’re untouchable, think again. This isn’t a game. Value your life! I’ve given you some real and raw food-for-thought to think about. Now it’s all up to YOU.
Stephanie Lahart
Mercymorn took her fat-tipped marker and scribbled on the plex, placing her new object squarely in the epirhoic layer. “This is the Beast,” she said. Augustine said, “That’s a muffin.” “I see a cloud, but with a face,” said Ianthe. “If you take that main squiggle for an eye.” You said, “I thought it was a flower,” and God said, “No, yes, I agree, there’s something–glorescent about it.” And Ortus said, “Thought it was a snake in a bush.” “I hate you all,” said Mercymorn passionately. “I have hated you for millennia… except you, my lord.” “Thanks,” said God. “I merely want to put you in a jail,” said his Lyctor, now meditative, “and fill up the jail with acid once for every time you made a frivolous remark, or ate peanuts in a Cohort Admiralty meeting, or said, ‘What would I know, I’m only God.’ Then at the end of a thousand years, you would say, ‘Mercy, I have learned not to do any of these things, because I hated the acid you put on me.’ And I would say, ‘That is why I did it, Lord. I did it for you, and for your empire.’ I often think about this,” she finished.
Tamsyn Muir (Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2))
The racial dimension of mass incarceration is its most striking feature. No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation's capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison. Similar rates of incarceration can be found in black communities across America. These stark racial disparities cannot be explained by rates of drug crime. Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. If there are significant differences in the surveys to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color. That is not what one would guess, however, when entering our nation's prisons and jails, which are over-flowing with black and brown drug offenders. In some states, black men have been admitted to prison on drug charges at rates twenty to fifty times greater than those of white men. And in major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. These young men are part of a growing undercaste, permanently locked up and locked out of mainstream society.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
So Japan is allied with Germany and they’re like “Sweet the rest of the world already hates us let’s take their land!” So they start invading China and Malaysia and the Philippines and just whatever else but then they’re like “Hmm what if America tries to stop us? Ooh! Let’s surprise attack Hawaii!” So that’s exactly what they do. The attack is very successful but only in a strictly technical sense. To put it in perspective, let’s try a metaphor. Let’s say you’re having a barbecue but you don’t want to get stung by any bees so you find your local beehive and just go crazy on it with a baseball bat. Make sense? THEN YOU MUST BE JAPAN IN THE ’40s. WHO ELSE WOULD EVER DO THIS? So the U.S. swarms on Japan, obviously but that’s where our bee metaphor breaks down because while bees can sting you they cannot put you in concentration camps (or at least, I haven’t met any bees that can do that). Yeah, after that surprise attack on Pearl Harbor everybody on the West Coast is like “OMG WE’RE AT WAR WITH JAPAN AND THERE ARE JAPANESE DUDES LIVING ALLLL AROUND US.” I mean, they already banned Japanese immigration like a decade before but there are still Japanese dudes all over the coast and what’s more those Japanese dudes are living right next door to all the important aircraft factories and landing strips and shipyards and farmland and forests and bridges almost as if those types of things are EVERYWHERE and thus impossible not to live next door to. Whatever, it’s pretty suspicious. Now, at this point, nothing has been sabotaged and some people think that means they’re safe. But not military geniuses like Earl Warren who points out that the only reason there’s been no sabotage is that the Japanese are waiting for their moment and the fact that there has been no sabotage yet is ALL THE PROOF WE NEED to determine that sabotage is being planned. Frank Roosevelt hears this and he’s like “That’s some pretty shaky logic but I really don’t like Japanese people. Okay, go ahead.” So he passes an executive order that just says “Any enemy ex-patriots can be kicked out of any war zone I designate. P.S.: California, Oregon, and Washington are war zones have fun with that.” So they kick all the Japanese off the coast forcing them to sell everything they own but people are still not satisfied. They’re like “Those guys look funny! We can’t have funny-looking dudes roaming around this is wartime! We gotta lock ’em up.” And FDR is like “Okay, sure.” So they herd all the Japanese into big camps where they are concentrated in large numbers like a hundred and ten thousand people total and then the military is like “Okay, guys we will let you go if you fill out this loyalty questionnaire that says you love the United States and are totally down to be in our army” and some dudes are like “Sweet, free release!” but some dudes are like “Seriously? You just put me in jail for being Asian. This country is just one giant asshole and it’s squatting directly over my head.” And the military is like “Ooh, sorry to hear that buddy looks like you’re gonna stay here for the whole war. Meanwhile your friends get to go fight and die FOR FREEDOM.
Cory O'Brien (George Washington Is Cash Money: A No-Bullshit Guide to the United Myths of America)
It is a scandal—or, rather, it should be a scandal and one wonders why it isn’t—that the US prison population, after reaching a postwar low in the early 1970s, has since grown more than 500 percent. The United States locks up a higher percentage of its own population than any other nation in the world. Even with extraordinary prison construction projects over the last decades, the cells are still overfull. This massive expansion cannot be explained by a growing criminality of the US population or the enhanced efficiency of law enforcement. In fact, US crime rates in this period have remained relatively constant. The scandal of US prison expansion is even more dramatic when one observes how it operates along race divisions. Latinos are incarcerated at a rate almost double that of whites, and African Americans at a rate almost six times as high. The racial imbalance of those on death row is even more extreme. It is not hard to find shocking statistics. One in eight black US males in their twenties, for instance, is in jail or prison on any given day. The number of African Americans under correctional control today, Michelle Alexander points out, is greater than the number of slaves in the mid-nineteenth century. Some authors refer to the racially skewed prison expansion as a return to elements of the plantation system or the institution of new Jim Crow laws. Keep in mind that this differential racial pattern of imprisonment is not isolated to the United States. In Europe and elsewhere, if one considers immigrant detention centers and refugee camps as arms of the carceral apparatus, those with darker skin are disproportionately in captivity.
Michael Hardt (Declaration)
Here the mountains were like the walls of a great jail which shut in the combatants. After Appomattox it was as though mortal enemies had been locked in the same prison without taking away the deadly weapons they knew so well how to use. Perhaps in no other region of the United States except the Southern mountains were the lives and property of a great number of pro-Union civilians lost in the war. In Pennsylvania, Kansas and a few other border areas the people were subjected to occasional Confederate forays, but those areas were comparatively rich and the losses were soon restored. But in the highlands much of the modest and slowly-built-up accumulations of three generations were destroyed, impoverishing virtually the entire population.
Harry M. Caudill (Night Comes to the Cumberlands)
To criminals imprisoned in the Basel jail, Barth preached that the first Christian community was composed on Golgotha: “They crucified him with the criminals.” Which is more amazing, to find Jesus in such bad company, or to find the criminals in such good company? … Like Jesus, these two criminals had been arrested …, locked up and sentenced. … And now they hang on their crosses with him and find themselves in solidarity and fellowship with him. They are linked in a common bondage never again to be broken … a point of no return for them as for him. There remained only the shameful, pain stricken present and the future of their approaching death.
William H. Willimon (How Odd of God: Chosen for the Curious Vocation of Preaching)
Truth cannot itself be bound, nor will it dwell in a soul that lies bound in sin's prison; and therefore when once truth and the soul are agreed, or rather Christ and the soul, who are brought together by ‘truth,’ then the poor creature may lift up his head with joy, for his redemption and jail-delivery from this spiritual bondage draws nigh; yea, the day is come, the key is in the lock already to let him out.
William Gurnall (The Christian in Complete Armour - The Ultimate Book on Spiritual Warfare)
... explained to him how nature is not criminal. How common it was for certain African men on expedition to engage in what might be called "reciprocal sex." How it was common for these men to declare more love for their boy wives than their girl wives. And then why wouldn't Sir Richard Oslet, the hunter said, allow himself, as such to no longer feel pain. And that was the moment, Oslet explained, when hge realized he loved Sowning, that what he had always felt for Downing was love, and Oslet begged Downing's forgiveness. But how could he possibly have know any sooner when there was no language to describe how he felt, no currency, and to even attempt to speak of it would have smacked of revolt, but hopeless revolt, one toward a freedom that Oslet knew did not exist. For Britian, didn't Downing know was perfectly to content to ignore them, so long as there was ambiguity. And hadn't Downing grown up reading, as Oslet had, for decades about the thousands of souls who tried to love one another unambiguously, or those who got caught and were tried allover England at the Courts of Assize, the quarter sessions, and hung? Was Downing so think as to be unaware of the Offenses Against the Person Act, asnd risk the bopth of them landing locked up for years as men were in Redding Jail... Nature, Oslet said the hunter had said, ... unlike man does nothing in vain. God is Nature, and because God is Nature, he created nothing in vain. Therefore, the soul can never expire. It is immortal and in perpetual transit.
Jessica Anthony (Enter the Aardvark)
Ah, just like old times,” Janco said. “Oh, wait. What am I saying? It’s just like almost every time I’m with you, Yelena. Don’t you get tired of being arrested all the time?” “You’re exaggerating,” I said. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot about our last mission. We weren’t locked up, just tied down. My mistake.” “Give it a rest, Janco,” Ari said. “Yeah, well, it seems every time I’m in Sitia, I’m thrown into jail. Do you think they’ll stamp my frequent-visitor card? I think I get a prize if I’ve been in them all.
Maria V. Snyder (Night Study (Soulfinders, #2; Study, #5))
Cards on the table, girls? Karl has served a sentence at Exeter prison for assault; Antony for theft. Karl was merely sticking up for a friend, you understand, and – hand on heart – would do the same again. His friend was being picked on in a bar and he hates bullying. Me, I am struggling with the paradox – bullying versus assault, and do we really lock people up for minor altercations? – but the girls seem fascinated, and in their sweet and liberal naivety are saying that loyalty is a good thing and they had a bloke from prison who came into their school once and told them how he had completely turned his life around after serving time over drugs. Covered in tattoos, he was. Covered. ‘Wow. Jail. So what was that really like?’ It is at this point I consider my role. Privately I am picturing Anna’s mother toasting her bottom by her Aga, worrying with her husband if their little girl will be all right, and he is telling her not to fuss so. They are growing up fast. Sensible girls. They will be fine, love. And I am thinking that they are not fine at all. For Karl is now thinking that the safest thing for the girls would be to have someone who knows London well chaperoning them during their visit. Karl and Antony are going to stay with friends in Vauxhall and fancy a big night to celebrate their release. How about they meet the girls after the theatre and try the club together? This is when I decide that I need to phone the girls’ parents. They have named their hamlet. Anna lives on a farm. It’s not rocket science. I can phone the post office or local pub; how many farms can there be? But now Anna isn’t sure at all. No. They should probably have an early night so they can hit the shops tomorrow morning. They have this plan, see, to go to Liberty’s first thing because Sarah is determined to try on something by Stella McCartney and get a picture on her phone. Good girl, I am thinking. Sensible girl. Spare me the intervention, Anna. But there is a complication, for Sarah seems suddenly to have taken a shine to Antony. There is a second trip to the buffet and they swap seats on their return – Anna now sitting with Karl and Sarah with Antony, who is telling her about his regrets at stuffing up his life. He only turned to crime out of desperation, he says, because he couldn’t get a job. Couldn’t support his son. Son? It sweeps over me, then. The shadow from the thatched canopy of my chocolate-box life –
Teresa Driscoll (I Am Watching You)
Can I keep asking questions or am I getting on your nerves?” she asks. “Ask me anything.” Honestly, I’ve been locked up for a really long time. Being in jail is lonely, and I need a connection. I want that connection with her. And only her. “But I get to ask you questions, too.
Tammy Falkner (Calmly, Carefully, Completely (The Reed Brothers, #3))
I was just beginning to wonder how long I would have to wait when finally a guard sauntered up and said, “Galloway, get your stuff, get your bed.” I ran to my cell to get my stuff and I grabbed the toothpaste. The toothpaste was in this clear tube and was clear like hair gel. It had a muted, watered-down mint flavor. Everything you got in jail was made specifically to be as safe as can be. One of the guys told me, “Don’t ever take anything from being locked up. It’s bad luck.” But I told myself, You ain’t coming back. You ain’t getting locked up again, so you’re taking a souvenir. I grabbed that little clear tube and I put it in my pocket and walked out of my cell. As I came out, all of the guys from my cellblock were lined up to say goodbye. The guard had this look on his face like, “What is going on?” I walked down the line shaking each man’s hands. They all told me they were glad they had met me. They told me that I made an impact on them. One guy said, “You came in here and you’ve been to war and back, you’re missing two limbs, but you still had a smile on your face the whole time. You’ve gone through so much and you are able to keep smiling. That motivates me.” I was really touched. I kept going down the line, shaking hands and saying my farewells, and finally I got to Michael Bolton. He said, “Hey, man, I’ve asked people this before and they never follow through with it but I believe you will. Could you print out some TV guides? Because you know we just tell them the number. We don’t know what’s on at what time, what station.” I said, “Yeah, man, I’ll do that.” And I looked around to the other guys and asked, “Does anybody want any crossword puzzles or anything like that?” They all said that would be awesome. “All right, Michael, I’ve got your address so I’m gonna send it to you. And listen, man, I’m gonna give you my email address. When you get out shoot me an email. I want to stay in touch and see how things are going.” I turned to the guard who was still baffled by what was happening and said, “I’m ready.” He rolled his eyes and opened the door. We walked out and they handed me my clothes. I pulled off the orange jumpsuit and tossed it. I changed back into my clothes. I signed everything I had to sign, got some paperwork to take with me, and walked out a free man again. Well, my epic freedom moment was short-lived, because I realized my cell phone was dead. I walked down the road to a gas station and asked if I could use the phone. I called Tracy and told her where I was and asked her to pick me up. When Tracy arrived I hopped in the car and the very first thing I said to her was “I gotta get home. I have to print out some TV guides and I need to write a letter to some of the guys in there.” She started laughing and when she could compose herself enough to talk said, “My sisters and I all said we guarantee Noah is going to come out of jail with new friends. He’s going to be friends with everybody.
Noah Galloway (Living with No Excuses: The Remarkable Rebirth of an American Soldier)
My experience of crims, Swann began, most of the ones locked up at least, is that they're either stupid, unlucky or they're lashing out. Most of them aren't dangerous. The ones that are, sure, they belong in jail.
D. Whish Wilson
His phone rang just as he was tucking it back into his coat. He saw that it was his brother, Matt, and answered. “I had a feeling you’d call.” “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a douchebag?” Nick grinned at the inside joke. Back when he and his brothers were younger, they’d once gotten carried away and “accidentally” tossed three footballs through Tommy Angolini’s second-floor apartment windows after he’d claimed during recess that Scottish douchebags couldn’t throw for shit. Tommy had been wrong on two counts: first, in not knowing that they were only half-Scottish douchebags, and second, in doubting the athletic prowess of the McCall brothers. Not surprisingly, that bit of good-natured fun had put an end to any trash talk from Tommy Angolini, but also had royally pissed off their father. A sergeant on the NYPD at the time, he had rounded up Nick and his brothers, brought them down to the Sixty-third Precinct, and locked them up in an empty jail cell. For six hours. Needless to say, after that the McCall brothers had all developed a healthy appreciation for the benefits of being lawabiding ten-, nine-, and seven-year-olds. The only person more traumatized by the lockup had been their mother, who’d spent the six hours crying, refusing to speak to their father, and making lasagna and cannoli—three helpings of which she’d practically force-fed each of her sons immediately upon their homecoming from the Big House
Julie James (A Lot like Love (FBI/US Attorney, #2))
Send him away again.” “It’s not that simple. You’re actually lucky he didn’t take you to his jail.” “His jail?” Donovan was smiling and enjoying his narrative. “Oh yes. About five years ago, Romey’s brother found a late-model sedan with Ohio tags parked behind a barn on their family’s farm. He looked around, heard a noise, and found this guy from Ohio locked in a horse stall. It turns out Romey had fixed up the stall with chicken wire and barbed wire, and the poor guy had been there for three days.
John Grisham (Gray Mountain)
Indian misery is when somebody takes your land. Indian misery is when somebody kills your friends. Indian misery is when your people turn against you. Indian misery is being slaves to people. Indian misery is being locked up in jail. Indian misery is people killing your food for money. Indian misery is fighting. Indian misery is no peace. Indian misery is when you get killed. Indian misery is if you lose the fight. (Andrew Herman, student)
Timothy P. McLaughlin (Walking on Earth and Touching the Sky: Poetry and Prose by Lakota Youth at Red Cloud Indian School)
Jake,” I murmur. He opens his eyes. “Are you absolutely sure this is what you want? The baby, I mean.” “I’m sure.” His gaze drops to my stomach. “This baby will be made of everything I have loved my whole life.” “I’m gonna get fat,” I mumble. “No, you’re going to get even sexier.” Coming close again, he wraps his arms around me tightly, rubbing the tip of his nose against mine. “How could I not want something made up of Trudy Wethers’s DNA?” “Still Bennett.” I grin. “You haven’t made an honest woman of me yet.” “You ready to hop that plane to Vegas now?” “A shotgun wedding. My folks would be so proud.” I laugh. “What do you want to do about the wedding?” he asks. “Move it forward?” “That would give me a matter of weeks to plan it. Why don’t we just wait until after the baby is born?” I see him quickly do the math in his head. “We wouldn’t be able to get married July twenty-first. You okay with that?” “I’m going to have a mini-Jake soon. Of course I’m okay with that.” “Or a mini-Tru,” he says. Then his expression suddenly changes. “Fuck, a girl. We might have to lock her up, Tru.” I scrunch up my face. “Why?” “Because, if she looks anything like you, I’m one day going to be fighting off horny teenage boys left, right, and centre. I’ll probably end up in jail for beating one to death if I find him with his hands on my baby girl.” He shudders comically. I let out a laugh. “Let’s hope if we have a boy, he’s doesn’t grow up to be one of those horny teenagers…or God forbid, as horny as you are. Otherwise we’ll have some girl’s dad round here kicking his ass.” “Then I’ll end up in jail for beating the shit out of the dad—fuck, this is a no-win, sweetheart,” he groans, dropping his head back against the rest. “I’m doomed to a future behind bars.” Laughing softly, I say, “Don’t worry, baby, we’ll figure a way to keep you out of prison.” I kiss the tip of his nose, then open the door, ready to get out of the car and into the house to bed.
Samantha Towle (Wethering the Storm (The Storm, #2))
The law spends too much time demonising ordinary people who’re just trying to get on with their lives. Society’s changed and the law hasn’t kept pace; so it’s us, the mugs, who have to enforce them, who get it all in the neck. I’m sick of it. There’s enough genuine bad guys to lock up without sending some daft kids on a H.M.P. University of Crime course for smoking weed or selling pills. You can’t criminalise people for a consumer preference. Might as well jail them for preferring Cornflakes tae All Bran.
Irvine Welsh (Filth)
The charge of hate is used selectively, of course. Lesbians spread their hatred of men but are never charged, while feminists teach young girls that all men are potential rapists. Blacks taunt whites with names like “honky” or “cracker,” without recrimination. Jewish written scriptures overf l ow with hatred of Christ and Christians. Say the N-word while white and go to jail. Burn a cross while white and go to jail. Challenge Holocaust statistics with the truth while white and go to jail. Today, we have a dictatorship with only the illusion of democracy; not even a pretense of a republic anymore.The judiciary makes law as directed by the administration. The execu-tive rules absolutely. Legislators simply steal, from the top of the heap for the new priesthood: the legal profession. Lawyers are the privileged class today, and they are destroying America. If spreading false information is a crime, as some are accused of doing, shouldn’t we lock up the administration officials who lied to us about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction?
Edgar J. Steele
The Americans had urged us to finish the Mavi Marmara affair. We had already reached a compensation agreement with Turkey for the families of the Turks killed in the operation. What was needed now was a carefully worded script for a concluding conversation between Erdogan and me. As extra insurance against a future abandonment of the agreement by Erdogan, I asked Obama to be in on the phone conference. He did so from a special mobile cabin at the airport. “Recep, how are you, my friend?” the president said to Erdogan. “How’s the wife, how’s the family?” The genuine camaraderie in his voice tallied with what I had heard: One of Obama’s closest friends among foreign leaders was the Turkish president, possibly because in Obama’s eyes Turkey was an example of a modern, successful and democratic Islamic state. Presumably this friendship later weakened when, following an attempted coup against him on July 15, 2016, Erdogan transformed Turkey into a rigidly authoritarian regime, locked up all his political opponents, and threw more journalists in jail than almost any other ruler on earth. Erdogan and I each read our lines. I thanked Obama. The Marmara affair was finally settled.
Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi: My Story)
So,” Roland says, rolling it off his tongue until that one little word sounds obscene. “What’s my punishment for peeping?” No words. None. This man makes my blood boil. He leaves me torn between punching him smack in the jaw and telling him to go back to hell—or else doing something so rotten I’m sure it means jail time. I’m paralyzed with choices. Finally, my hand decides for me. I square my jaw, stretch up on my toes, and—while he locks up, staring at me with wide eyes—grasp a fistful of his hair, and yank. I’m not trying to make him bald or anything. I just want to make a point. But I’m not expecting the way his breath catches. The way he goes stock-still with a vibrant intensity, and a faint, rough sound catches in the back of his throat. Something that sounds like pleasure. His eyes close, the expression on his face searing into my head—until I realize what I’m doing and just how insane he’s made me. Snatching my hand back, I retreat a step, struggling to catch my breath. Roland’s eyes drift open slowly, lingering in a slow, searching burn. “Interesting. I had no idea you were so kinky, Miss Landry,” he whispers. Oh. Oh, frick. I’ve done it now.
Nicole Snow (Damaged Grump)
C. was reminded of another little significant-seeming episode: Once he’d had to spend a night in jail in A.—the main town of the district he came from—and realized right away that he’d never get a single minute’s sleep in the hole they’d locked him up in. His cell was probably used as a drunk tank; traces of the catastrophes attendant to the drying-out process were visible all around… In the GDR, thought C., succumbing to alcohol still made for indelible images, so it was not entirely unreasonable for writers and artists to spend their time drinking. The cell whose door slammed behind him consisted of several cubic yards of bad smells, and contained a cot, a broken-down chair, and a cracked toilet that wouldn’t stop running and stood in a puddle of sludge. On the wall behind the cot, a broad swath of vomit trailed down, already dried; the dim light of a 25 watt bulb showed the walls covered from top to bottom with unidentifiable filth—possibly human excrement—spatters of blood, and countless inscriptions: scratched messages and addresses. It was enough reading material to last him all night. One of the first slogans he read stated straight out: Long live capitalism.
Wolfgang Hilbig (The Interim)
She became best friends with a twenty-year-old who enabled her eating disorder. Wendy was wasting away before my eyes, and instead of doing anything about that, I went to France, murdered my boyfriend, and got locked up in jail. I really couldn’t have done a worse job if I had tried.
Rebecca Kelley (No One Knows Us Here)
Hicks next told them what was most relevant in justifying a federal probe. Should the FBI send an agent to the jail at Charleston, he should talk to an inmate named Sarah, who “will tell you that during the Sumner murder trial when Sheriff H. C. Strider was saying that he could not locate Too Tight Collins, actually Collins was at that time locked up in the Charleston jail.” Sarah, according to Hicks, was granted various privileges at the jail for performing sexual favors for the inmates as well as for Strider.
Devery S. Anderson (Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement)
It’s kind of like you, Bonnie. You cut off your long hair too. Just like Rapunzel.” “That’s right, Katy. That’s because a mean old witch locked me up at Tower Records, and I had to wait for my boyfriend to get out of jail and come rescue me.” “What the fu—heck are you talking about?” Finn asked, amending his curse at the last minute for the sake of the little girl who was hanging on every word. A little snort escaped out of my nose at the incredulous look on his face, and Katy giggled. “Bonnie Rae,” Finn choked out, finally laughing, “can we please change the subject?
Amy Harmon (Infinity + One)
Now git goin thru that screen door before I use it as a weapon. You're just a witless fool. That's what you are, a fool, Mae Mae said, shaking her head as if she had just discovered truth. An' put a log on that fire for me on your way out. Make yourself useful for something but misery. Cause you messed with the wrong MaMae. Look in my eyes. Philip, in all of his dejection and correction, had to look with respect. Yes, maam, he said sheepishly looking up from from the pine floor into her narrow, serious eyes. See I see right thru ya, she said, noddin her chin and holding her eyes like fire into his soul. An' the motives of your heart are stinkin up the place. I don't want the kids to smell it when they wake up from their naps. I don't know what's wrong with your generation. Missing men. No fathers. It disgusts me. At least in my time, women got some respect an alimony. An my daughter's got six kids and broke. But yours, they just gone missing. Hiding up in the woods with some women. Or abscounding to your cousin Satchie's trailer. Not supportin' them kids. Goin to jail. Servin their selves instead of the One who made 'em. It ain't no man problem, it's a sin probl'm. An people my age just sick that none of yall, no not one, know the capital letters of RESPONSIBILITY. Now take your lies and country jeans an drive down the gravel cause you ain't welcome here no more. The screen is locked, Ma Mae shouted as Philip walked blankly out the door.
Toni Orrill
Americans are generally aware that at any given moment, 2.2 million people are locked up in our prisons and jails, 700,00 of them in our county and city jails. What most don't know is that, over the course of a given year, a total of 11.7 million people spend some amount of time in America's county and city jails, double the number in 1983. Three-fifths of them have not been found guilty of anything, and three-fourths, both convicted and pretrial detainees, are there for nonviolent traffic and other low-level offenses. African Americans are detained at rates nearly five times greater than whites and three times higher than Latinos. The total cost is $9 billion a year. Why? Two simple words: money bail.
Peter Edelman (Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America)
There is no way to know, now, as Lanelle passes back the bills to the truckers, and Pearl wipes down the counters at the Fuel Stop, and Ricky hoists his laundry bag over his shoulder to carry to his folks’, that in three months, after Jeremy’s body has been found in the closet, after Ricky has been handcuffed and locked up in the parish jail, after the front pages of newspapers all over the state have run the same black-and-white photograph of the bogeyman sex offender who’s murdered a little boy, and after the Lawson home has become command central for the police, who have taped the closet and Ricky’s bedroom in yellow tape, and, after all of Ricky’s belongings from the room have been placed in sealed plastic bags marked EVIDENCE and Jeremy’s body has been sealed up and carried off to the morgue, that Terry Lawson—Pearl’s husband, Joey and June’s father—will take his son, Joey, out for an afternoon motorcycle ride.
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich (The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir)
It was only in the United States that teenagers were locked up in real jails, he tried to tell himself, but still his stomach contracted with abject terror.
Viveca Sten (In the Heat of the Moment (Sandhamn Murders, #5))
The second category in our litmus test is the denial of the legitimacy of one’s opponents. Authoritarian politicians cast their rivals as criminal, subversive, unpatriotic, or a threat to national security or the existing way of life. Trump met this criterion, as well. For one, he had been a “birther,” challenging the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency by suggesting that he was born in Kenya and that he was a Muslim, which many of his supporters equated with being “un-American.” During the 2016 campaign, Trump denied Hillary Clinton’s legitimacy as a rival by branding her a “criminal” and declaring repeatedly that she “has to go to jail.” At campaign rallies he applauded supporters who chanted “Lock her up!
Steven Levitsky (How Democracies Die)
How to Bulletproof Your Association’s Biggest Asset: The Money The 35-Point Financial Procedures Manual If you are elected treasurer of your community association and accept the challenge, there are many policies and procedures you will need to learn before you start planning budgets, collecting assessments, and signing checks. Board members and officers of all community associations in America should read the following 35-point list of financial procedures and consider it a survival manual. It is divided into four segments: •​Inheriting Old Books •​Guarding and Vigilance •​Cyberbanking Procedures •​Efficiency Maximization and Return The Takeover: Inheriting Old Books 1.​Incoming treasurers or accounting managers should never accept the recording of financial books or accounts of a previous money manager. In order to be sure there is a clear line between the actions of the prior money manager and the current, a new bank account should be opened and the funds transferred to the new account. The new account helps to draw the line of accountability. Liability is also reduced by the new account, since any old checks that may be lying around will then be invalid. 2.​Immediately notify the bank when officers change. Bank signature cards must always be brought current immediately following the annual election. All officers should go to the bank together to provide identification and verify signatures. 3.​For incoming treasurers or accounting managers, a “transition document” stating all association account balances—including a statement as to the purpose of the reserve account, all contracts (including the vendors’ names and the expiration dates), and any outstanding payments due for services rendered or received—should be provided to the new money manager. 4.​Destroy all old checks and deposit slips. Use a cross shredder or a document destruction company. 5.​Keep new checks under lock and guard the keys. 6.​If a board treasurer or management company refuses to give up the bank accounts (it has happened), send the person or company a certified letter demanding the rightful return
Sara E. Benson (Escaping Condo Jail)
over “second hand” representations of God by worn-out churchmen, and argued that religion should become “one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy,” the Universalist preacher Abner Kneeland had spent sixty days in a Boston jail for the crime of publishing a letter in his own newspaper, the Boston Investigator, declaring God to be “nature itself,” and any other deity to be “nothing more than a chimera.” Kneeland’s paper had frightened Boston with its promiscuous advocacy of controversial causes, from a woman’s right to keep her own bank account to interracial marriage, divorce, and birth control: he had been locked up for his politics as much as his pantheism. This was to be the last such incarceration in the state’s history, but no one knew that at the time. In scarcely over a decade there would be arrests of prominent Bostonians for their active opposition to the fugitive slave law;
Megan Marshall (Margaret Fuller: A New American Life)