If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
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.
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.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
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.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
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.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
