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 only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
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.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
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.
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.
Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
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.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
