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.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
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.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
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!
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
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?
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
