He who profits by a crime commits it.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
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.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.
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.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Justice renders to every one his due.
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.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
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.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
