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.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
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.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
Vices are not crimes.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
A sick person is a prisoner.
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.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
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 true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
