" Meeting men and women in prison, I often found myself wondering where exactly the tipping point lies, where we go from feeling empathy for a person to feeling anger toward her, or fear. When do we stop seeing someone as a person deserving of our sympathy and care and start seeing her as a criminal in need of punishment who deserves to suffer? Who do we think of as criminals, and when did Savannah become one? When she first tried drugs at age eleven? When she shot heroin at thirteen? Or do her physical altercations with her mother mark the moment we should stop feeling empathy for her; when we should start to feel angry or afraid? Do we fear the young man who is also given drugs as a child but who steals from a stranger rather than from his mother? Who uses a gun rather than his fists? "
― Christine Montross , Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration