Socrates: Very well. Now this is enough of that light topic. What about the Missouri prison?

Thrasymachus: We hoped to talk to you about that.

Socrates: Good! It is becoming so easy to get into prison these days that one should have some concern for what may become at any time his own future state.

Glaucon: Certainly.

Socrates: You will recall how unexpectedly Julian Hawthorne got into prison, and how he became interested in prison then for the first time.

Glaucon: Yes.

Socrates: Indeed, none of us has much concern for how other people are treated in prison.

Glaucon: It seems not.

Socrates: The thing to do, then, is always to view a penitentiary in the humane light of what we would ourselves require if we got into it.

Glaucon: Certainly.