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.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
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.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
A sick person is a prisoner.
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.
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.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
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!
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
