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.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
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.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
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.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
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.
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.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
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.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
