Quotes

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

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.

The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

Vices are not crimes.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

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.

Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

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.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

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

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

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.

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.