No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
No crime has been without a precedent.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
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 asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
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.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
