Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
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.
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.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
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 just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
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.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
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 can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
