Quotes

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

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.

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

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.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

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.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.

To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

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.

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.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

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.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

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.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.