In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
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.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
