Quotes

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

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

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.

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

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

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.

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

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

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.

He who profits by a crime commits it.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

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.

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.