Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
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.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
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%.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.
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 isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
