History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
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.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
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.
No man should be judge in his own case.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
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
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
No crime has been without a precedent.
