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.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
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.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
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.
