The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
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.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
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.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
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.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
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.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
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.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
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.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
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.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
