There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
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.
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.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
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 never been contained except I made the prison.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
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%.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
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.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
