The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Man is condemned to be free.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
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.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
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.”
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
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.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Justice renders to every one his due.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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!
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
