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.
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.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
Justice renders to every one his due.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
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.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
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.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
