It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
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.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
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.
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.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
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.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
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.
