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.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
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.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
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.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
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.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
Vices are not crimes.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they’ll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
