No crime has been without a precedent.
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 worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
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.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
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.
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.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
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.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
