Quotes

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

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

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.

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.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they’ll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

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.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

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

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

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

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

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

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

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

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

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

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.

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.