The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
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.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
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.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
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.
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.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
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.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
