It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
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.
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.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!
