Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
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.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
No man should be judge in his own case.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
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.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
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.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
Vices are not crimes.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
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.
