Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
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.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
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.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
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.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
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.
