Quotes

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

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

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

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

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.

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

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.

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

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

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

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.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

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