Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
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.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
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.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Vices are not crimes.
