We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
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.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
