There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
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.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
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.
There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
