The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
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.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
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.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
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.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
We are prisoners of ideas.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
