The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
Vices are not crimes.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
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.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
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.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
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.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
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.