Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
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.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
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.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
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.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
