Quotes

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.

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

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.

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.

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.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.

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

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!

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

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

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

No man should be judge in his own case.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

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.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.