How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"Warden," he asks," can I ask one favor? Can Sister Helen touch my arm?" (4.213)
Prejean and Pat have never touched, so one of his last requests is to have her take his arm. Again, to take away someone's freedom is to take away their humanity, in this case denying them even human contact.
Quote #5
I see a stack of disciplinary report on Eddie. Pat must have requested these. Or maybe Eddie sent them on his own. (5.28)
Pat got Eddie's disciplinary reports. It's sort of sweet—he cares about his brother and is trying to watch over him. It's also depressing, though, in that the disciplinary reports become the only bit of Eddie he's got. It's as if Eddie has been turned into nothing more than his disciplinary reports: he's a bureaucratic problem to solve rather than a human being. Confinement turns him into paperwork.
Quote #6
Such measured retribution is attained, I believe, by sentencing which requires nonnegotiable long-term imprisonment for first-degree murder… (7.10)
Prejean is arguing for long sentences for violent crimes, without parole. Does this mean that a murderer should still be in jail if he's 80 or 90? And is life imprisonment really substantially better than a death sentence in terms of preserving human dignity? And what about the way in which mandatory sentencing has resulted in a ballooning prison population? Prejean doesn't really address these questions; if you want to learn about them, you need to look elsewhere. (You could try Christian Parenti's Lockdown America for a start.)