Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
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.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
Vices are not crimes.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
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.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
