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.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
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 we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
No crime has been without a precedent.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
