I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
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.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
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.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
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.
Man is condemned to be free.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
