When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
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.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
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.
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.
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.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
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.
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.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
