Quotes

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

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

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

A sick person is a prisoner.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

No crime has been without a precedent.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

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.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

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.

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.

Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they’ll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.