A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
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.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
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 only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
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.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
