Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
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.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
A sick person is a prisoner.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
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.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
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 worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
