It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
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.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
