There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
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.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
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.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
Man is condemned to be free.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
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 thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
