The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
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.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
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.”
We are prisoners of ideas.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
