The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
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.
No man should be judge in his own case.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
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.
