The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
No man should be judge in his own case.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
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.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
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.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
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.
They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
