While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
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.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
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.
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.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
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.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
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.
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.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
