While crime is punished it yet increases.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
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 common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
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.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
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.
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.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
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.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
