A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
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.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
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.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
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.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
