Quotes

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

Vices are not crimes.

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

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 only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

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.

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 crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

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

There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

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

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

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

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.