Quotes

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

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

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.

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

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

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

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.

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

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.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

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

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

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.

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.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

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

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

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

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.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

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

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.