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.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
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.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
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.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
