No man should be judge in his own case.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
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.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
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.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
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.
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.
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.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
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.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
