Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
A sick person is a prisoner.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
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.
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.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
