Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
We are prisoners of ideas.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
Vices are not crimes.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage 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.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
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.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
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.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
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.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
