On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
