Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
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.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
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.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
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.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they’ll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
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.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
