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.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
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.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
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.
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.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
