We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
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.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
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.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
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!
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
