The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
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.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
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.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
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.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
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.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
