Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
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.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
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.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
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 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.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
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.
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.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
