Quotes

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

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!

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.

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.

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.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

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.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.