Quotes

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

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

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

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

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.

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

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

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

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.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

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

There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

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.

I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

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