To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
Justice renders to every one his due.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
A sick person is a prisoner.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
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 know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
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.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
