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 have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
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.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
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.
No man should be judge in his own case.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
We are prisoners of ideas.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
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.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
