Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
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.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
No crime has been without a precedent.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
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.
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
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
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.
No man should be judge in his own case.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
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.
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.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
