Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
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.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
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.
A sick person is a prisoner.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
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.
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.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
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.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
