Quotes

To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

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.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.

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

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

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

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.