Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
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.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
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.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
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?
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
