In jail a man has no personality. He is
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.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
The refined punishments of the spiritual
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
A sick person is a prisoner.
A sick person is a prisoner.
It was only when I lay there on the
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
No written law has been more binding
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
We don't seem to be able to check crime,
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
The worst of prison life, he thought,
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
We have initiated programs for re-entry
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.
Federal prison, if you get any of it,
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%.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Let us remember that justice must be
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
The severest justice may not always be
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
The world itself is but a large prison,
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
Corporal punishment falls far more
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
Before we can diminish our sufferings
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.
Prison continues, on those who are
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
The contagion of crime is like that of
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.
A just chastisement may benefit a man,
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Two men look out the same prison bars;
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us,
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
