The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
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.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
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.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
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.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
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
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%.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
