Quotes

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.

One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

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.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

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.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

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.

Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.