Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
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.
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
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.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
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.
No crime has been without a precedent.
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 never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
