The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
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.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
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.”
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
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.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
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.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
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.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
