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.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
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.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
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.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
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.
