I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40
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.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
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.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
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.
No crime has been without a precedent.
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.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
