Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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%.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
