Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
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.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
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.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
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.
Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.
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.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
