Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
Man is condemned to be free.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
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.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
Vices are not crimes.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
