Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
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.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
No man should be judge in his own case.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
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!
Crimes generally punish themselves.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
One crime is everything; two nothing.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
