Quotes

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.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

No man should be judge in his own case.

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

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.

He who profits by a crime commits it.

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

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

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

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.

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

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

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.

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

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

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

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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