Quotes

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

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.

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.

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.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

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.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

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

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

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

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

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.