Quotes

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.

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

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

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

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

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

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

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%.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

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.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

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

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

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.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

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.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

He who profits by a crime commits it.