Quotes

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

No crime has been without a precedent.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

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.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

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

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

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 my country we go to prison first and then become President.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.