Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
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.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
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.
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.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
