Walter Dean Myers Quotes

Sixty per cent of people entering prison today are illiterate.

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.

The regime in too many prisons is one of idleness, and locking up someone from such a background in idleness virtually guarantees re-offending. Instead there needs to be a full day's work every weekday in either the workshops or the education department or preferably a mixture of both.

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.

I am a firm believer that upon release, ex-offenders should be afforded a second chance to become productive citizens by providing rehabilitation and education that will help them join the workforce.

What are we going to do to make sure people get the skills they need if they are incarcerated so that when they are released to hit the ground running? And what are we all going to do to give people who've earned a second chance, a second chance?

Incarcerating non-violent offenders in the same population as more dangerous criminals has the effect of inculcating the former into a culture of criminality common among the latter, making them more of a risk to public safety upon release than when they originally went in.

Prisons are out of public sight, and most often out of mind. But the vast majority of prisoners will at some point leave jail and rejoin our communities, which is why what happens inside matters to us all.

Most of us think prison is a place where bad people go - which is what I thought for a long time - until you really start to look inside the system and you see, this is not right.

Have not prisons - which kill all will and force of character in man, which enclose within their walls more vices than are met with on any other spot of the globe - always been universities of crime?

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.

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.

All emphasis in American prisons is on punishment, retribution, and disparagement, and almost none is on rehabilitation.

Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try - by punishing the troublesome - to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously.

I believe, and I may be wrong, the system sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate, but they don't do that in a lot of cases.

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?

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

More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty.

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

Any politician who wants to eliminate parole just doesn’t understand law enforcement.

It was a shock to visit a Job Corps camp and see adults who had been through some years of our public education system stare at a blackboard where a teacher was writing CAT or helping them write their own names. In another room men were learning to tell time.

The notion that we should take away educational programs in prisons in order to be tough on crime makes no sense.

Prisons are universities of the opposition.

[We have to make] a distinction between dangerous violent criminals and people who are engaged in non-violent criminal activities….Your taking somebody out of the economy, breaking up their families, and putting them in a place with hardened criminals. I think that it is pretty hard to argue that has been a positive long-term result.

Too many states spend more money on prisons than on higher education.