If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
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.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
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.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
