There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
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.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
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.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
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.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
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.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
