I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
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.
We are prisoners of ideas.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
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.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
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?
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
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.
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.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
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.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.
