I submit that an individual who breaks a
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
The punishment can be remitted; the
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
It is impossible to go through life
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
Educate your children to self-control,
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.
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us,
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
No obligation to justice does force a
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
Women have worked hard; starved in
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.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
Civilization is maintained by a very few
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
Mere factual innocence is no reason not
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
I have been studying how I may compare
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
While we have prisons it matters little
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
The reformative effect of punishment is
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
Faults of the head are punished in this
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.
When you are younger you get blamed for
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
If punishment reaches not the mind and
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
There is a point at which even justice
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
