Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
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 severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
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.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
