While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker
Vices are not crimes.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
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
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.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
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.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
