“I am not a going fur to tell you my life like a song, or a story-book. But to give it you short and handy, I’ll put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There, you’ve got it. That’s my life pretty much.”
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 42. The convict Magwitch recounts his story to Pip and Herbert in this chapter. He has spent most of his life behind bars and lived a never-ending cycle of prison-time. This suggests an uncompromising justice system bent on punishment rather than rehabilitation for prisoners.