The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
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.
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.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
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 been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
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.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
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.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
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.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
