Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
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.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Justice renders to every one his due.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
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.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
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.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
