It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
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.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
Vices are not crimes.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
