No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
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.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
A sick person is a prisoner.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
No crime has been without a precedent.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
