Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
