The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
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.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
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.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
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.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.