Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
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.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
