It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
A sick person is a prisoner.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
No man should be judge in his own case.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
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.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
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.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
