Quotes

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

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

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

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

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.

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

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

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

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.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

No man should be judge in his own case.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

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.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.