I sort my prickly stuff into two piles when I am clearing areas.
One heap is brambles and pieces of thorn bushes (hawthorn, blackthorn etc) which are an odd shape so are awkward to feed into my big domestic wood chipper. This gets burnt and the ash and charcoal used.
The other pile is straighter branches of thorn trees and roses and the rest of the hedge branches. This all goes through the chipper, nasty thorns and all.
This goes in the compost or just as a mulch. The thorns are not a problem.