It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
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.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
