Quotes

Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.

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.

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”

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

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

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.

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

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

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

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!

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

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

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

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

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.

No man should be judge in his own case.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.