On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
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.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
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.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
