Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
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.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
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.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
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.
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.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
