Quotes

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

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

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

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.

No man should be judge in his own case.

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

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

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.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

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.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

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

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

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.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.