You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
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.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
Vices are not crimes.
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.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
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.
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.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
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.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
