When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
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.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
We are prisoners of ideas.
