Quotes

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.

There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

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.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

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.

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.

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.