The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
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.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
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.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
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.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
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!
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
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.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
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.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
