There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
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.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
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.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.
