"i think that inmates very generally obtain some sense of security from the feeling, however illusory, that although most staff persons are bad, the man at the top is really good but perhaps merely hoodwinked by those under him."

"...these identity concerns point to the difficulty of sustaining a drama of difference between persons who could in many cases reverse roles and play on the other side."

"the innmate-painted mural that prisons, mental hospitals, and other establishments pridefully display in a conspicuous place is not evidence that inmates as a whole were encouraged in art work, or felt creatively inspired in the setting, but it does provide evidence that at least one inmate was allowed to throw himself into his work."

"it is a melancholy human fact that after a time all three parties - inmate, visitor, and staff realise that the visiting room presents a dressed up view, realise that the other parties realise this, too, and yet all tacitly agree to continue the fiction."

"having to control inmates and to defend the institution in the name of its avowed aims, the staff resort to the kind of all-embraacing identification of the inmates that will make this possible. The staff problem here is to find a crime that will fit the punishment."

"the interpretative scheme of the total institution automatically begins to operate as soon as the inmate enters, the staff having the notion that entraance is prima facie evidence that one must be the kind of person the institution was set up to handle. a man in a political prison must be traitorous; a man in a prison must be a lawbreaker; a man in a mental hospittal must be sick. if not traitorous, criminaal or sick, why else would he be there"

"however harsh the conditions of life in total institutions, harshness alone cannot account for this sense of life wasted; we must rather look to the social disconnections cansed by entrance and to the failure (usually) to acquier within the institutions gains that can be transferred to outside life-gains such as money eaarned, or marital relations forrmed, or certified training received"

"sustained rejection of a total institution often requires sustained orientation to its formal organisation, and hence, paradoxically, a deep kind of involvement in the establishment. similarly, when staff take the line that the intransigent inmate must be broken...,then the institution shows as much special devotion to the rebel as he has shown to it"