If we were brought to trial for the
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
If two people fight on the street, whose
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.
There is a point at which even justice
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
Man is condemned to be free.
Man is condemned to be free.
While crime is punished it yet
While crime is punished it yet increases.
There are few better measures of the
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.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch;
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
The English laws punish vice; the
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
I have been studying how I may compare
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
While we have prisons it matters little
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
Two men look out the same prison bars;
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
It is the deed that teaches, not the
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
The solution to our drug problem is not
The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.
The best situation of all, and one
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
America is the land of the second chance
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
One of the problems that the marijuana
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.
I asked a man in prison once how he
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.
Let us remember that justice must be
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
I can tell you this on a stack of
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.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Before we can diminish our sufferings
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.
When it comes to freedom, we are but
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
They were being driven to a prison,
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
