Quotes

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.

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!

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

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

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

The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

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.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.

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.

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they’ll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

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.