Damnation Island Quotes

“Insanity was once believed to be due to a lack of faith, or demonic influence and possession, and it was treated by bleeding, starvation, prison cells, and straitjackets.”
― Stacy Horn, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York

“Kalief Browder was arrested in 2010 at age sixteen for stealing a backpack and then held for three years without a trial on Rikers Island. During his time on Rikers, Kalief was beaten by both guards and inmates, and he spent an inconceivable two years in solitary confinement before his case was finally dismissed in 2013.”
― Stacy Horn, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York

“In my dealings with these people, it has been my aim to be, in the first place, Just. In the second place, Firm. In the third place, Kind.”
― Stacy Horn, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York

“Being drunk in public was inexcusable for a woman. One annual report of the Board of Police Justices bluntly stated that “public exhibitions of drunkenness in females indicate a depraved and abandoned condition,” while men were sometimes let off the hook because in their case there were often “circumstances to be taken in mitigation of punishment which rarely exist in cases of females.”
― Stacy Horn, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York

“An 1888 police justice came right out and declared that for women only, simply being out at night was probable cause. The way he saw it, “no decent, respectable woman would be found in the street without an escort after 10 P.M.,” and therefore, he told a Women’s Prison Association investigator, “any woman alone in the street after that hour ought to be arrested.” Accordingly, at night police would sometimes sweep up women by the dozens.”
― Stacy Horn, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York

“the relation between crime and poverty is no more essential than between crime and wealth.” Where were the standing armies of police to monitor the crimes of the elite?”
― Stacy Horn, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York

“The dark shadow of crime spreads right and left, from the Penitentiary and the Workhouse, over all the institutions, the Asylum, the Alms-House and Charity Hospital; so that, in the minds of the people at large, all suffer alike from an evil repute.” Being poor had become a character trait that needed “correction,” like the impulse to steal or cheat. The Christian impulse to help the needy had been tamped down and replaced with an inclination to punish them.”
― Stacy Horn, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York

“Poverty,” journalist Junius Henri Browne explained in 1869, “is the only crime society cannot forgive.”
― Stacy Horn, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York