Crimes generally punish themselves.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
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.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
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%.
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.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
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.
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.
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.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
