No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
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.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
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.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.