I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
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.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
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.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
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.
