Quotes

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

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.

I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

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

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

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.

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

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