Quotes

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

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.

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

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

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.”

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

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.

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

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.

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.

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

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

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.

I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.