In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
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.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
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.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
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.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
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.
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.
The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
