Quotes

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

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 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 never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

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 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.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

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

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

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

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

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.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

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.

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

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

Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.

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.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.