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.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
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.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
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.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
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.
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.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
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.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
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.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
