In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
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.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
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!
To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
