Quotes

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

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.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.

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.

We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.