The Women's House of Detention Quotes

“...our criminal legal system makes it harder for people to be employed, while knowing full well that unemployment is directly correlated to crime.”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“Any brush with the criminal legal system seemed to taint these individuals for life, making a lie of our supposedly fundamental belief that an arrested person is innocent until proven guilty, or is redeemed after doing their time.”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“...having an arrest record was an inescapable censure that permanently destabilized the lives of working-class people. Arrested for being poor, the criminal legal system did its best to ensure they stayed poor forever. Regardless of whether they were convicted, for the rest of their lives they would face questions about their arrests in job interviews, on applications for government assistance, and while trying to get career licenses or join professional organizations.”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“In other words, they did the same things for which working-class queer women were being arrested. The vast majority of people who bucked the conventions of gender were punished for it, while a select (white) few were christened the harbingers of modernity.”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“Because queerness is not a vertical identity, so long as our society sees personal care as something that should mainly come from the nuclear family, there will always be queer people in need of care.”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“His detention prevents his working, and thereby sentences his dependents to poverty and the relief rolls. Unable to produce funds, he cannot hire the counsel of his choice.… Lacking income, he cannot accumulate funds to purchase his freedom. Without freedom he cannot seek out witnesses or other evidence for his defense… and if the defendant loses his job before trial, he loses with it perhaps his best argument, if convicted, for a suspended sentence.”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“A shocking number of people incarcerated in the House of D were there for months because they could not afford even minuscule bail amounts of fifty dollars, meaning that they were considered innocent but held in a maximum-security prison because they were poor.”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“...the biggest problem jail prisoners face is how to get out on bail...”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“Although prison officials warned her that many of the women would lie to her about their backgrounds and crimes, she found them to be fundamentally honest. She also felt it critical to note something she did not expect: 'the cheerfulness and gaiety which abound in the House of Detention so much of the time.' This should in no way distract from our understanding of the prison as a brutal place; rather, it reflects the strength and hope of those incarcerated. As activist Jay Toole said, 'A lot of us called it the playground. A lot of us called it a prison. I called it both.”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“...the New York Times argued that it was better to be raped than end up gay.”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“Women have to find strength from other women, because that is what gets us through...”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“White applicants with a criminal record were called back only 17 percent of the time—which was still more often than Black applicants with no criminal record (who were called back only 14 percent of the time). Black applicants with a criminal history fared the worst, receiving callbacks a paltry 5 percent of the time. Much as it was for Alison C. in the 1930s, whiteness is still a powerful force when it comes to overcoming the stigma of incarceration.”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“...having a criminal record 'means I have to tell lies for the rest of my life in order to gain employment and I wonder if it is worth it! Must mistakes that were made in the past forever be held against a person? It seems so.”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

“Harry Anslinger had decided that Black people were criminal drug addicts, and then he created the conditions to make it true.”
― Hugh Ryan, The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison