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.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
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.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
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.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
No man should be judge in his own case.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
