Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
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.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
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.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
