Within Prison Walls / being a narrative during a week of voluntary confinement / in the state prison at Auburn, New York

I am a voluntary prisoner, it is true; nevertheless even a voluntary prisoner can’t unlock the door of his cell—that must be done by someone from outside.

You might better see to it that it gets into the newspapers in the shape you want, rather than let it leak out and be misrepresented, intentionally or otherwise.

I want to see for myself exactly what your life is like, not as viewed from the outside looking in, but from the inside looking out.

more accurately than those who live too close to the problem to see it in its true perspective.

a new belief in the power of men to respond to the right conditions and the right appeal.

No one could have understood better than I did at the outset, that it is impossible to place yourself exactly in the shoes of a man who has been sentenced to prison for an actual crime; I did not expect to do so. No one, so far as I know, has ever yet succeeded in putting himself precisely in the place of another in any given set of circumstances; yet that does not keep us from constantly studying and analyzing the human problem.

Donald Lowrie’s book, “My Life in Prison.”

It made me feel that I had no right any longer to be silent or indifferent; I must do my share to remove the foulest blot upon our social system.