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.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
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.
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.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
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.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
