The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
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.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
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.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Vices are not crimes.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
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.
