I can tell you this on a stack of
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
Organized crime in America takes in over
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
The refined punishments of the spiritual
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
The uneven impact of actual enforcement
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.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Our task must be to free ourselves from
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Here the great art lies, to discern in
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.
Civilization is maintained by a very few
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
I know not whether laws be right, or
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.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
I don't like being famous - it is like a
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
I was in prison, and you came unto me.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
I existed in a world that never is - the
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
Crimes lead one into another; they who
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Prison makes you a better judge of
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
The only difference between me and my
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
A just chastisement may benefit a man,
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
There is no greater punishment of
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
In prisons, those things withheld from
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
There is a point at which even justice
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
There is no peace because the making of
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
There are dreadful punishments enacted
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
