So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
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!
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
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.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
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 make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
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.
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.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
We are prisoners of ideas.
