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.
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.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
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.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
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.
They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.
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.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
