In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
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.
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
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!
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.
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.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
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.”
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
Vices are not crimes.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
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.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
