Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
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.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
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.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
