One crime is everything; two nothing.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
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.
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.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
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?
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
