I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
We are prisoners of ideas.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
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.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
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.
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.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
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.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
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.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
