Jailhouse Lawyers Quotes

“It is written, we musn’t forget, in the Prisonhouse of Nations —the United States of America. Here, there are more than 2.3 million men, women, and juveniles under lock and key. As theNewYork Timeshas recently reported, the U.S. has just under 5 percent of the world’s population, yet it has a quarter of the world’s prison population.1 In the realm of imprisonment, the United States truly is Number one.”
― Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the USA

“Darrow explained this issue in these words in his 1902 address: See what the law is: when these men [the rich] get control of things, they make the laws. They do not make the laws to protect anybody; courts are not instruments of justice. When your case gets into court it will make little difference whether you are guilty or innocent, but it’s better if you have a smart lawyer. And you cannot have a smart lawyer unless you have money. First and last it’s a question of money. Those people who own the earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing justice, not the slightest in the world.”
― Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the USA