Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
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.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
Crimes generally punish themselves.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
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.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
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.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
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.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
