I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
Vices are not crimes.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
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.
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.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
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.
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.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
