Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
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.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they’ll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
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.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
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.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
Justice renders to every one his due.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
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.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
